The number of recorded crimes and offences brought to justice (OBTJ) for the period year ending March 1999 to year ending December 2008 (latest available) are given in Table 1.
It is not possible to directly compare recorded crimes and offences brought to justice. Crimes and offences brought to justice are not measured in the same way. The Home Office Counting Rules for Recorded Crime provide a framework for the consistent recording of crimes by police forces based on reports from victims and witnesses, whereas offences brought to justice are a count of the convictions, cautions, penalty notices for disorder and cannabis warnings given to individuals for separate offences in law, or the number of separate offences taken into consideration. As such, it is not possible for published statistics to directly link individual recorded crimes to the offences for which the offender is subsequently brought to justice.
In addition, there is an inevitable time lag between a crime being committed and the offence being brought to justice at court, so the level of recorded crime in a particular period is not directly comparable to the number of offences brought to justice in the same period. However, in the vast majority of cases offences will be brought to justice within 18 months of the crime being recorded.
Thousand 12 months ending Number of crimes recorded by the police Total offencesbrought to justice March 1999 5,109 1,103 June 1999 5,195 1,096 September 1999 5,234 1,086 December 1999 5,261 1,085 March 2000 5,301 1,084 June 2000 5,262 1,071 September 2000 5,218 1,046 December 2000 5,195 1,013 March 2001 5,162 996 June 2001 5,209 989 September 2001 5,298 989 December 2001 5,422 1,001 March 2002 5,525 1,002 June 2002 5,670 1,010 September 2002 5,787 1,025 December 2002 5,844 1,031 March 2003 5,898 1,038 June 2003 5,910 1,044 September 2003 5,932 1,051 December 2003 5,932 1,060 March 2004 5,935 1,077 June 2004 5,850 1,087 September 2004 5,750 1,097 December 2004 5,679 1,125 March 2005 5,560 1,138 June 2005 5,523 1,187 September 2005 5,507 1,235 December 2005 5,504 1,277 March 2006 5,479 1,327 June 2006 5,452 1,356 September 2006 5,414 1,386 December 2006 5,387 1,409 March 2007 5,351 1,423 June 2007 5,255 1,444 September 2007 5,139 1,454 December 2007 4,982 1,456 March 2008 4,951 51,446 June 2008 4,869 51,430 September 2008 4,838 51,406 December 2008 4,789 51,386 1 Police recorded crime statistics based on data from all 43 forces in England and Wales excludes British Transport for the period before year ending March 2008 2 Includes British Transport police from period year ending March 2008. 3 The introduction of the National Crime Recording Standards (NCRS) in April 2002 resulted in significant increases in the number of crimes recorded. 4 Excludes British Transport police 5 The numbers of offences brought to justice (OBTJ) for 2008 are un-validated data from the courts and police, therefore provided as management information as they are provisional and likely to change. Note: 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 the courts and 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.