Data on fraud cases broken down by police force area

Request

I am writing to make a formal request for information under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 covering:

• 1 January 2022 to 31 December 2022
• 1 January 2023 to 31 December 2023

I would like to obtain:

• The number of fraud cases brought to the CPS for prosecution broken down by the police force who referred the case.
• For fraud cases taken to trial please provide a breakdown, by police force that referred the case, of how many were successful and how many were unsuccessful.

Response

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) holds information in scope of your request.

CPS statistics are collected under the “Fraud & Forgery” Principal Offence Category (POC) which originated in the 44 Police Forces. This does not necessarily indicate that a prosecution was commenced or completed in the geographical area covered by that Force or the corresponding CPS Area due to cross border transfer of cases. In addition, due to the nature of how the POC is applied, this will not necessarily be a complete picture of the fraud cases prosecuted, as there may be other offences that mean defendants have a different POC.

Relevant information is found in the attached document labelled “12189 Data”. When considering the data please note the supplied caveats.

The data in columns B and E show the overall number of completed Fraud and Forgery prosecutions (defendants). Fraud and Forgery is a Principal Offence Category allocated at the finalisation of the prosecution proceedings.

The data in columns C, D, F and G show the total number of convictions after trial (C and F) and acquittals/dismissals after trial (D and G) for all defendants allocated the POC Fraud and Forgery. 

A guide to understanding CPS Data is published with all the CPS quarterly data reports. This is found by going to cps.gov.uk, navigating to Publications, then Performance management and case outcomes and finally CPS Quarterly Data Summaries.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) publishes the official quarterly statistics on activity in the criminal justice system. These statistics include the number of convictions and sentence per offence type.

Alternatively, a request may be made directly to data.access@justice.gov.uk.