To ask the Attorney-General how many conditional cautions have been issued by police forces in England and Wales since 2013; and for what offence each such caution was issued.

The following Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) data show the total number of conditional cautions that were issued following consideration by the CPS during the period from 1 April 2013 to 6 September 2013 for each police force area. Further tables containing a detailed breakdown of data by offence category have been placed in the Library of the House. The data updates a previous response provided on 21 May 2013 that gave details of the number of conditional cautions issued for the last five years covering the period to 31 March 2013.

The data showing the number of conditional cautions issued is taken from defendant based data and not the number of offences committed. The total number of cautions issued will therefore differ from that noted in the breakdown of offence category.

Since 8 April 2013, the police have been able to issue a conditional caution without reference to the CPS in all categories of offences except for indictable only offences and those categorised as hate crime or domestic violence.

As a result of these revised arrangements, data for conditional cautions issued after 8 April by the police will be reported under the official statistics relating to crime and policing, maintained by the Home Office and the official statistics relating to sentencing, criminal court proceedings, offenders brought to justice, the courts and the judiciary issued by the Ministry of Justice.

The CPS data will only record those cases where following a request for Charging advice, the CPS determined that the case was more suitable to be dealt with by way of a conditional caution and where the police have charged a suspect but a prosecutor on review following charge determines that it is more appropriate to proceed by way of a conditional caution.