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Ministry of Justice Data First Magistrates’ Court Defendant - England and Wales

Dataset

Summary

Citation:
Ministry of Justice, released 09 November 2021, ONS SRS Metadata Catalogue, dataset, Ministry of Justice Data First Magistrates’ Court Defendant - England and Wales, https://doi.org/10.57906/de97-0m89

Documentation

Description:
The Ministry of Justice Data First magistrates’ court defendant dataset provides data on defendants' appearances in criminal cases before magistrates' courts (including Youth Courts) in England and Wales from 2011, and has been extracted from the LIBRA management information system, used by Her Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service (HMCTS) to manage cases within magistrates' courts. Information on defendants' characteristics, the main offence charged, key case dates, processes and outcomes is included: for example age, gender, ethnicity, offence category, hearings, plea, conviction, sentencing and committal to Crown Court. Each record in the dataset gives information about a single person and case. As part of Data First, records have been deidentified and deduplicated, using our probabilistic record linkage package, Splink, so that a unique identifier is assigned to all records believed to relate to the same person, allowing for longitudinal analysis and investigation of repeat appearances. This opens up the potential to better understand court users and to build evidence on, for example, patterns associated with prolific offending and what works to reduce reoffending. The Ministry of Justice Data First linking dataset can be used in combination with this and other Data First datasets to join up administrative records about people from across justice services (courts, prisons and probation) to increase understanding around users' interactions, pathways and outcomes. Cases can also be linked directly to cases appearing in the Data First Crown Court defendant dataset.

Coverage

Spatial

Spatial Coverage:
  • England
  • Wales
Geographical Levels:
  • local authority district
  • lsoa11

Temporal

Start Date:
01 January 2011
Latest Data:
31 December 2020
Frequency:
IRREGULAR
Distribution Release Date:
09 November 2021

Provenance

Source:
Administrative

Access and Governance

Usage

Condition of Access:
  • Access needs approval
  • Restricted access
Condition of Use:
  • Special statistical disclosure rules
  • Output required for approval
Resource Creator:
Office for National Statistics

Access

Access Service:
  • Safe Rooms, SafePods
  • Assured Organisational Connectivity – office based
  • Assured Organisational Connectivity – remote access
Jurisdictions:
GB-EAW
Data Controller:
Ministry of Justice
Access Level:
Access Level 3

Format and Standards

Languages:
en
Formats:
CSV