FOI/2021/2719
You asked
Please supply the following information:
What percentage of current or recent rape/sexual abuse cases are tried in court and end in conviction?
What percentage of non-recent/historic sexual abuse or rape cases are tried in court and end in conviction?
- What percentage of non-recent/historic child abuse cases are "dropped" by the police and, what percentage are investigated?
What percentage of non-recent/historic child abuse cases are subject to charging decision by the CPS following police "investigation"? I.e. what percentage are charged?
We said
Thank you for your enquiry.
Our publications and data concern crime as it is experienced by victims, or as it is recorded by police. We do not generally produce statistics on convictions or offence outcomes. We publish some convictions data provided to us by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and some data on offence outcomes provided to us by the Home Office (HO).
We publish CPS convictions data relating to rape and other sexual offences in the following release Sexual offending: victimisation and the path through the criminal justice system.
The data in these tables relate to when the case was completed, not when the offence took place, therefore it is not possible for us to determine if the offence is recent or non-recent.
The CPS data we publish alongside the release can be found in the following table Sexual offending: Crown Prosecution Service appendix tables. This is the latest data we have available and are for the year ending March 2018.
CPS Table 2: Pre-charge decisions, prosecutions and convictions recorded for rape offences by the CPS, year ending March 2012 to year ending March 2018 shows that in the year ending March 2018 58.3% of rape offence cases ended in conviction (2,635 out of 4,517 completed prosecutions).
CPS Table 7: Pre-charge decisions, prosecutions and convictions recorded for other sexual offences by the CPS, year ending March 2012 to year ending March 2018 shows that in the year ending March 2018 80.4% cases of other sexual offences ended in conviction (9,654 out of 12,005 completed prosecutions).
We publish data from the Home Office relating to police recorded offence outcomes assigned to child abuse offences within our Child abuse and the criminal justice system - Appendix tables, published alongside the release Child abuse in England and Wales: March 2020.
Table 1: Outcomes assigned to child abuse offences, by outcome group, year ending March 2018 to year ending March 2019 (Experimental Statistics) shows that in the year ending March 2019, of the 91.3% of child abuse cases assigned an outcome, 4.4% resulted in a charge or summons.
The data in these tables relate to when the case was completed, not when the offence took place, therefore it is not possible for us to determine if the offence is recent or non-recent.
For further information relating to convictions you can contact the Crown Prosecution Service at enquiries@cps.gov.uk.
For further information relating to offence outcomes, you can contact the Home Office at Crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.
If you have any other crime-related queries in the future, please contact us via the following email crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk.