Journey Times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System 2024-25

7.    Journey times for accused prosecuted in courts by court type

[Supplementary Table 4]

As noted above, type of court refers to the final destination court of a case, cases can move between court types over their journey time.

Figure 5 shows the median journey time by court type for each financial year. Median journey times decreased in all court types in 2024-25 when compared to 2023-24: -4% for High Court (from 890 to 858 days), -5% in Sheriff solemn court (from 539 to 510 days), -5% in Sheriff summary court (from 223 to 212 days) and -6% in Justice of the Peace court (from 278 to 261 days).

Figure 5: Journey times have decreased during the latest financial year for all court types.

Median police known to verdict time by type of court and financial year.

The median journey times described above include all accused that have been prosecuted in criminal courts. However, if the accused fails to appear, the court may issue an arrest warrant, which can lead to an increase in the time taken to issue a verdict. Supplementary Table 5 (and in the supporting interactive dashboard: Journey times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System interactive dashboard) shows median journey times broken down by type of court and warrant status, that is if the accused had ever had a non-appearance warrant on the case. In general, for all courts, median journey times are higher if there is a non-appearance warrant connected with the case. In 2024-25 the median journey time for accused with a non-appearance warrant was 14 months, for accused without a non-appearance warrant the median time was 8 months. (Supplementary Table 5).

All information on Justice of the Peace courts is available in the supplementary tables and in the supporting interactive dashboard, commentary on JP courts is not included in this bulletin.