Helen Jones – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Attorney General
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Helen Jones on 2014-03-31.
To ask the Attorney General, how many prosecutions have been (a) commenced, (b) resulted in a non-custodial sentence and (c) resulted in a custodial sentence for (i) witness intimidation, (ii) perverting the cause of justice and (iii) conspiracy to pervert the course of justice as a result of incidents arising from cases involving domestic violence in each of the last five years for which figures are available.
Oliver Heald
The records held by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) identify the number of offences in which a prosecution commenced and reached a first hearing in magistrates’ courts which were flagged as involving domestic violence, rather than the number of defendants or cases prosecuted.
The data is accurate only to the extent that the flag has been correctly applied.
Offences of perverting the course of justice are charged under Common Law, conspiracy to pervert justice, by way of Section 1 of the Criminal Law Act 1977 and intimidation of a witness or juror by way of Section 51 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994.
The table below shows, for each of the last five years, the number of these offences charged and reaching a first hearing at magistrates’ courts, which were identified as involving domestic violence.
|
2009-2010 |
2010-2011 |
2011-2012 |
2012-2013 |
2013-2014 |
|
|
Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 { 51 }: Intimidating/threatening or harming a witness or juror |
846 |
859 |
763 |
611 |
686 |
|
Common Law: Perverting the course of justice (including attempts) |
140 |
136 |
103 |
121 |
150 |
|
Criminal Law Act 1977 { 1 }: Conspiracy to pervert the course of justice |
4 |
7 |
5 |
4 |
8 |
Data Source: CPS Case Management Information System
There is no indication of the final prosecution outcome, or if the charged offence was the substantive charge at the time of finalisation. It is also often the case that an individual defendant is charged with more than one offence against the same victim.
It is not possible to centrally disaggregate offences charged by way of Section 51 of the Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, to separately identify those offences relating to witnesses from those concerning jurors. Such information could only be obtained through a manual search of records which would incur disproportionate cost.
The CPS does not hold records of sentences imposed following a conviction. Statistics relating to sentences are maintained by the Ministry of Justice.
