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Prosecutions

Answer

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not maintain a central record of the number of defendants prosecuted for offences brought by way of the Communications Act 2003, the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and the Protection from Harassment Act 1997. This information could only be obtained by examining CPS case files, which would incur disproportionate cost.

However, information is held identifying the number of offences during the past five years in which a prosecution commenced and reached a first hearing at magistrates’ courts, rather than the number of defendants prosecuted, this is detailed in the following table.

Year	Communications Act 2003	Malicious Communications Act 1988	Protection from Harassment Act 1997
2010-2011	2,916	1,273	16,707
2011-2012	3,125	1,301	18,588
2012-2013	2,920	1,250	19,319
2013-2014	2,134	1,210	22,668
2014-2015	2,556	1,586	26,326
Data Source: CPS Case Management Information System

There is no indication of the final prosecution outcome, of if the charged offence was the substantive charge at the time of finalisation. It is also often the case that an individual defendant is charged with more than one offence.

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

21854

Session

2015-16

Subjects

Prosecutions

Legislation

Communications Act 2003

Protection from Harassment Act 1997

Malicious Communications Act 1988

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk