The Scottish Government

Title

Percentage of criminal cases dealt with within 26 weeks

National Indicator/Target

A 3 percentage point increase in the percentage of criminal cases disposed of within 26 weeks by 2011

Brief Description

The percentage of Sheriff Summary and District Court cases disposed of within 26 weeks of date of earliest caution and charge for any accused in the case, by the month that the case is first closed.

Strategic Objective(s) to Which Indicator Relates

This indicator informs progress in relation to:

Safer & Stronger; Wealthier & Fairer

More Detailed Definitions

Definitions of Keywords

Sheriff Summary: cases which are heard in the Sheriff Court by a Sheriff sitting without a jury.

District Court: cases which are heard in the District Court by either a Stipendiary Magistrate or a Justice.

Disposal: the Verdict Date, i.e. the date when proceedings are concluded by acceptance of a plea from the accused, or when the verdict is reached by the court (Sheriff, Magistrate or Justice).

Date of Caution & Charge: the date the accused is cautioned and charged by the police.

Evidence Source

The data source is a monthly data extract from the Crown Office and Procurators Fiscal Service ( COPFS) case management system, supplied to Justice Analytical Services within the Scottish Government. This provides a direct measure of process times for cases through the criminal justice system from caution and charge by the police to date of verdict in court.

Data are exported only when the whole case is first closed. A case can include more than one accused, and each accused can have one or more charges against them.

The data extract is based on a 'court appearance level' of detail (in that it contains information on each court appearance for each accused within a case), from which information can be derived and built up to 'case level'.

Baseline and Past Trends

The baseline year for this indicator is 2006/07, in which 65% of closed-cases were disposed of within 26 weeks.

Past Trends:
2005/06: 65%
2006/07: 65% (baseline)

(Data are only available from January 2005 onwards)

Methodology

The percentage of Sheriff Summary and District Court cases disposed of within 26 weeks of date of earliest caution and charge for any accused in the case, by the month that the case is first closed. "Disposal" for this indicator is defined as the latest date of verdict for any accused in the case.

Two main types of case are excluded from the analysis:

a) breach of probation and other social work orders, because of a lack of consistency in the way breaches are recorded in the data.

b) cases where the time from date of earliest caution and charge to the date of most recent verdict exceeds 1000 days, where there is likely to be some data recording anomaly for the dates involved (these are relatively few in number however this step is necessary to remove extreme and atypical cases)

Other cases excluded are re-opened cases, shell records, and non-relevant categories of case

Data Ownership and Quality Assurance

The monthly data extract from the COPFS case management system was established as part of the pilot Statistics and Management Information System ( SMIS) Project. It is not currently intended to seek National Statistics status for this data collection.

COPFS owns the data in its Case Management Database; the monthly extracts continue to be provided to the Scottish Government who use the data in developing indicators and monitoring performance for the Criminal Justice Boards.

Publication of Data

Information on a financial year basis will be published as part of the reporting arrangements in place for the National Indicators