Journey Times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System 2024-25
This bulletin assesses an accused person’s criminal justice journey time from the date an offence is reported to the police to case conclusion or verdict for the period from 2024 to 2025. This journey time is broken down by justice system stage and type of crime.
1. Key Points
This bulletin presents Official Statistics in Development on an accused person’s criminal justice journey time from the date that an offence is known by the police to case conclusion or verdict date. The bulletin also provides insights into the length of different stages of the justice journey. The bulletin uses two datasets supplied by the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) and the Scottish Courts and Tribunal Service (SCTS) covering the time period April 2017 to March 2025.
The data contained in this bulletin allow us to make observations about the average length of journey times in general, as well as how these journey times have changed over time.
The criminal justice system in Scotland is designed to ensure that justice is delivered fairly and in line with the rule of law. It involves a series of stages, beginning with the reporting the offence to the police, investigation of a crime, followed by decisions on prosecution, court proceedings, and, where appropriate, sentencing and rehabilitation. The diagram in figure 1 below illustrates these key stages, showing how a case progresses through the system and highlighting the roles of different agencies involved. It also provides a visual representation of the times associated with each stage, which will be referenced and discussed throughout the text.
Figure 1: Criminal Justice stages, showing how a case progresses through the system and highlighting the roles of different agencies involved and the time associated with each stage.
Information about the Criminal Justice journey.
New information in this bulletin on the date an offence is reported to the police (the “police known date”) enables the identification of historical offences. It also allows calculation of the time between an offence becoming known to the police and the date when the case is closed by COPFS or when a verdict is issued in the criminal courts. This is the period of the case accused’s journey time that Scottish criminal justice system organisations can influence. From now on, this bulletin will focus on this justice system dependent journey time and its stages.
However, information relating to the time since an offence was committed will continue to be available in the accompanying interactive dashboard. The dashboard is available at the following link:
Journey times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System interactive dashboard
In general the analysis shows:
- In 2024-25, the percentage of accused whose case was closed by COPFS or who got a verdict in court within one year of the date the offence was reported to the police increased (by 5% to 87% for COPFS and 6% to 70% for court) when compared to 2023-24.
- As expected, median journey times for accused persons in solemn cases are longer than those for accused in summary cases. Median journey times in 2024-25 were around 2 years 4 months in High court, 1 year 5 months in Sheriff solemn courts and around 7 months in Sheriff summary court.
- Overall median journey times decreased compared to 2023-24, by 32 days in High Court, 29 days in Sheriff solemn court and 11 days in Sheriff summary court.
- As in previous years, the key factor influencing the overall journey time in solemn courts is the time from when the case is reported to COPFS to when it is registered in court.
- Compared to 2023-24, in 2024-25, median COPFS report to court registration time decreased by 1 day (0%) in High Court and increased by 6 days (2%) in Sheriff solemn court.
- Compared to 2023-24, in 2024-25, median court registration to verdict time decreased by 4% in High Court (to 10 months) and decreased by 20% to 91 days in Sheriff solemn court.
- As in previous years, the key factor influencing the overall journey time in Sheriff summary court, is the time from court registration to verdict. In 2024-25 the median court registration to verdict time was around 4 months.
- There are significant variations in journey times depending on type of crime committed. The longest journey times are for case accused charged with at least one sexual crime and a verdict issued in High court. In 2024-25, the median journey time in these situations was 2 years and 11 months. This is an increase of 2% (22 days) from 2023-24.
- In the majority of crime types, median journey times decreased in 2024-25 compared to 2023-24. However, there was an increase in median journey times in the latest financial year for: Rape & attempted rape (+4%), Other sexual crimes (+20%), Shoplifting (+1%), Fraud (+2%), Fire-raising (+6%), Vandalism (+4%), Crimes against public justice (+15%) and Other crimes against society (+10%).
Contact
Email: justice_analysts@gov.scot