Police Cautions
Home Department
Written answers and statements, 3 November 2009
David Ruffley (- Shadow Minister, Home Affairs; Bury St Edmunds, Conservative)
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department
(1) how many offenders have received a police caution in each year since 1997;
(2) how many offenders received (a) one, (b) two, (c) three and (d) four or more police cautions between 1997 and 2009;
(3) how many offenders received (a) one, (b) two, (c) three and (d) four or more police cautions in each year since 1997.
Claire Ward (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Ministry of Justice; Watford, Labour)
I have been asked to reply.
The information requested is shown in the following tables. Data prior to 2000 has not been included.
Table 1 shows the number of people cautioned on at least one occasion in each calendar year from 2000, and provides a breakdown of this total by the number of times each person was cautioned in the year.
| Table 1: Numbers of people cautioned by calendar year | |||||
| Number of people cautioned on: | |||||
| Total number of people cautioned at least once in year | Only one occasion in year | Two occasions in year | Three occasions in year | Four or more occasions in year | |
| 2000 | 238,746 | 210,490 | 21,842 | 3,934 | 2,480 |
| 2001 | 237,337 | 210,012 | 21,140 | 3,891 | 2,294 |
| 2002 | 239,325 | 213,191 | 20,733 | 3,444 | 1,957 |
| 2003 | 253,884 | 226,407 | 21,904 | 3,610 | 1,963 |
| 2004 | 260,797 | 230,100 | 24,251 | 4,141 | 2,305 |
| 2005 | 302,845 | 265,660 | 29,335 | 5,149 | 2,701 |
| 2006 | 346,486 | 301,443 | 35,369 | 6,252 | 3,422 |
| 2007 | 360,749 | 312,192 | 38,280 | 6,824 | 3,453 |
| 2008 | 329,199 | 285,687 | 34,785 | 5,714 | 3,013 |
Table 2 shows the number of people that have been cautioned on at least one occasion at any time between 2000 and 2008, and the breakdown of this total by the number of times each person has been cautioned over this time period.
| Table 2: Numbers of people cautioned between 2000-08 | |
| Caution occasions | Number of people with cautions between 2000-08 |
| One | 1,639,891 |
| Two | 397,458 |
| Three | 104,915 |
| Four or more | 51,874 |
| Total | 2,194,138 |
These figures have been drawn from the police's administrative IT system, the police national computer (PNC), which, as with any large scale recording system, is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing. The figures are provisional and subject to change as more information is recorded by the police.