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Emergency Services: Crimes of Violence

Answer

The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does not hold centrally retrievable data on the reasons for discontinuation at an offence level within its Case Management System (CMS) and associated Management Information System (MIS).

While the CPS applies the Code for Crown Prosecutors, including both the evidential and public interest tests, the specific reasons for decisions are recorded within individual case records rather than in a structured, searchable format.

Accordingly, the CPS is unable to provide the number of cases where the public interest test was cited as the reason for discontinuation in Assault on Emergency Worker cases. To obtain this information would require a manual review of individual case files.

However, to provide context on the volume of cases involved, the table below shows the number of offences for Assault on an Emergency Worker which were charged and reached a first hearing at the magistrates’ court over the last five calendar years under the Criminal Justice Act 1988 and the Assaults on Emergency Workers (Offences) Act 2018:

Calendar Year	Offences
2021	34,852
2022	33,073
2023	34,135
2024	38,847
2025	36,074

Secondary information

Type

Written question

Reference

11765

Session

2026-27

Subjects

Crimes of violence Emergency services Prosecutions

Contains statistics

Yes

Link

View this Written question on www.parliament.uk