Prior to 1 January 2004, extradition requests from prosecutors in England and Wales to other jurisdictions were sent via the Home Office. Since 1 January 2004, when the European arrest warrant (EAW) came into force, the Serious Organised Crime Agency (SOCA) and the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (for EAWs concerning Scotland) are the designated authorities for the receipt and transmission of EAWs in the UK.
(a) To collate this data would involve a manual examination of all records from 2001 onwards and would incur disproportionate cost. However, in “The Law on Extradition: A Review”, published by the Home Office in March 2001 the then Home Secretary explained that in 2000, surrenders to the UK of persons who did not consent to extradition took an average of 10 months to complete. This does not include those surrendered to Scotland or Northern Ireland.
(b) It is not possible from SOCA current systems to provide data broken down into the time taken to secure transfer to UK jurisdiction of an alleged criminal from each member state of the European Union therefore an average time cannot be calculated. This would require a manual examination of all files and incur disproportionate cost.
However, a report by the European Commission published in May 2009 found that contested EAWs executed by EU member states had taken an average of 43 days to complete.