Speeches

David Hanson – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Justice

The below Parliamentary question was asked by David Hanson on 2016-10-07.

To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many arrest warrants were issued for defendants who failed to attend court in each year since 2010.

Sir Oliver Heald

The number of arrest warrants issued for defendants who failed to attend court in England and Wales for the period 2010 to 2014, the latest data available, can be viewed in the table below.

Number of Failure to Appear (FTA) Warrants received (1) in England and Wales, 2010- 2014.

Year

Total warrants issued

2010

93,473

2011

88,788

2012 (2)

72,819

2013

70,225

2014 (3)

70,016

(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 live systems used by police forces principally for operational reasons. As such, they are subject to change over time. For these reasons, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when those data are used.

(2) West Midlands constabulary are unable to supply any FTA warrant data from 1 April 2012.

(3) Lincolnshire Police were unable to supply any data for Q4 of 2014 because of technical issues related to the introduction of a new warrant management system. Data presented are for the first three quarters of 2014 only.

Notes:

  • These data are reported to the Ministry of Justice by police forces. As such, they are not directly comparable with other data presented in the Criminal Statistics bulletin, which are returned directly from administrative data systems used by magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court.