A database has been established consisting of depersonalised information that has been extracted from the Case Monitoring Subsystem. The data used for this report relate to charges and cases finalised between 1988 and 1997. It would be impossible to guarantee perfect accuracy even in the best of circumstances when dealing with an enormous number of charges. Incorrect codes are occasionally entered on the computer, and duplicated records sometimes arise for a variety of reasons. Some of the problems with the data were overcome in the production of this report, and while there may be small errors in some of the figures shown, the data are certainly sufficiently accurate to indicate trends over time in convictions and in sentencing.
Some information is presented in the report on the gender, ethnicity, and age of offenders.
However, in practice, ethnicity is likely to be recorded by a mixture of self identification and recorder judgement. Recording ethnicity by means other than self-identification can lead to people being classified in the wrong ethnic groups. Also, no allowance is made for people wanting to specify more than one ethnic group. Data on the ethnicity of offenders in traffic cases are not usually recorded on the Law Enforcement System. Also, people who have a suspended sentence of imprisonment imposed can have the sentence activated because of a subsequent conviction.