Evaluation of the Reforms to Summary Criminal Legal Assistance and Disclosure

Appendix A - Supplementary figures and tables

Estimating the overall guilty plea rate

The data on guilty plea rates at each diet are based on a snapshot of the cases appearing at those diets in any single month. Thus the figure on the rate of guilty pleas offered at ID for July 2009 for example, is expressed as a proportion of all IDs in July 2009. As a result, these data refer to different groups of cases and it is therefore not possible to simply add up the guilty plea rates at each diet over a single month or any other time period. To obtain an overall guilty plea rate it would be necessary to follow a single group of cases from their PD through to their conclusion. Whilst this data has been provided for a sample of cases (see the section on analysis of disclosable summaries in Chapter 4), the numbers are not large enough to provide a robust estimate.

Thus the overall guilty plea rate was estimated using the figures on the proportion of cases concluded and the guilty plea rate at each diet. Figures A.1 and A.2 below detail the figures used for the pre-reform and post-reform calculations.

Figure A.1 Estimation of % of all cases with a guilty plea offered: pre-reform

The proportion of all cases with a guilty plea offered is calculated as: 22% + 14% + 16% + 6% + 2% + 1% = 61%.

Figure A.2 Estimation of % of all cases with a guilty plea offered: post-reform

The proportion of all cases with a guilty plea offered is calculated as: 33% + 9% + 12% + 5% + 2% + 1% = 62%.

Figure A.3 Types of offences registered for prosecution in the JP/district courts 2007/08 to 2010/11

Figure A.4 Types of offences registered for prosecution in the Sheriff courts 2007/08 to 2010/11