Journey Times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System 2024-25

2.    Introduction

This bulletin presents information on the time taken from the date the police are first aware of an offence (the “police known date”) and the date of case conclusion or verdict for persons accused of criminal charges. This is the third annual publication in a series of official statistics in development bulletins on this topic. Analysis will develop over time in line with user needs.

The time taken for an accused to progress through the justice system between an offence becoming known to the police and case conclusion or verdict will include:

• police investigation time,
• COPFS time in processing the reported crime and preparing for court where relevant,
• then finally for the accused whose case progresses to court, the court time in hearing and disposing the case. This stage can involve multiple contributors including: SCTS, COPFS, Police Scotland, defence solicitors, SLAB etc.

For the purposes of this bulletin,” journey time” is considered to be the time which the justice system can directly impact ie the time between the date that the police are aware of an offence and the time that the case is closed or the accused receives a verdict in court (“police known to case closed” time or “police known to verdict” time). However, the time from when an offence is committed to when it is reported to the police (“offence to police known” time), the time from when the offence is committed to when the case is closed by COPFS (“offence to case closed” time) and the time from an offence being committed to when a verdict is issued in the criminal courts (“offence to verdict” time), will be shown in the supplementary tables and the accompanying interactive tool. The dashboard is available at the following link:

Journey times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System interactive dashboard

 The journey times of two categories of accused are presented here:

1. those that are reported by the police or another reporting agency to COPFS and are disposed by COPFS either because they have decided that no action should be taken or an alternative to prosecution (e.g. a warning letter or a fiscal fine) is issued and,
2. accused that COPFS decide should be prosecuted in court.

Related Publications

An initial report on the link between Journey Time and a number of demographic characteristics including ethnicity, gender and age is available here: https://www.gov.scot/publications/journey-times-in-the-scottish-criminal-justice-system-analysis-of-equality-factors-of-accused-disposed-in-court/

We continue to develop this, with a follow up report analysing the effects of equality factors and crime type  planned for 2026-27.

An Official Statistics in Development Publication for Scotland

These statistics are official statistics in development. Official statistics in development may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

In the next year, Justice Analytical Services will develop these statistics in line with the Code of Practice for Statistics in order to have them accredited as Official Statistics.

Scottish Government statistics are regulated by the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR). OSR sets the standards of trustworthiness, quality and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics that all producers of official statistics should adhere to.

More information about Scottish Government statistics is available on the Scottish Government website.