Information available to the Ministry of Justice on the number of persons aged 16 and over issued with a penalty notice for disorder (PND) in (a) a police station and (b) on the street, in England and Wales, 2004 to 2006 is shown in the following table.
PNDs were introduced under the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001 to provide the police with a simple financial punishment to deal with minor antisocial and nuisance offending either at a police station or on the street. Operational guidance to forces issued by the Secretary of State for Justice sets out the criteria which should be considered by officers in deciding where to issue a PND.
The PND was made available to all forces from April 2004.
Police station Street 20042 55,219 6,901 2005 110,432 34,845 2006 125,122 75,634 1 Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from large administrative data systems generated by police forces. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used. 2 The penalty notice for disorder scheme commenced in 2004. Source: OCJR E and A (Office for Criminal Justice Reform, Evidence and Analysis Unit), Ministry of Justice