5. Accused offered COPFS disposals

[Supplementary Tables 1 and 2]

When police report a case to COPFS, the Procurator Fiscal decides if the accused should be prosecuted. In that situation, the Procurator Fiscal (PF) will raise proceedings against the accused in court. If the PF decides that court proceedings are not justified then COPFS can mark the accused in one of two ways: i) COPFS can issue a direct measure as an alternative to prosecution, for example a warning letter, a conditional fixed penalty, a fiscal fine or diversion from prosecution or ii) the case can be closed with no action taken by COPFS (if for example there is insufficient evidence to justify prosecution).

This section reports on the journey times of accused for whom COPFS decide not raise proceedings in court.

The percentage of accused reported to COPFS which were not marked for prosecution in court and had their cases closed within one year of the offence being committed has been falling since 2019-20 but increased slightly over the last year (from 78% in 2022-23 to 80% in 2023-24, figure 1).

Figure 1: Percentages of accused with cases closed by COPFS within 1 year, between 1 and 2 years and over 2 years since offence date by financial year.

Median times from offence to police known date, police known date to COPFS report, COPFS report to case closed and offence to case closed are shown in Figure 2.

Figure 2: Median times from offence to case closed, offence to police known, police known to COPFS report and COPFS report to case closed for accused with cases closed by COPFS direct measures or no action.

In general median journey times for accused persons with a COPFS “No action” marking were longer than for accused persons marked for direct measures (e.g. a warning letter or a fiscal fine), especially during financial years 2021-22 and 2022-23. This difference has decreased in financial year 2023-24 where the median journey time was 189 days for cases marked no action and 161 days for cases marked for direct measures.

In 2023-24, the median journey time for cases marked by COPFS for no action decreased by 56 days (-23%) when compared to 2022-23. For cases marked as direct measures, the decrease in 2023-24 compared to 2022-23 was 9 days (-5%).

For accused with cases closed by COPFS the median time from offence to police known is 0 days.

Times from police known to COPFS report are similar for accused marked as direct measures or no action. However the time from police known to COPFS report has been increasing since 2020-21 going from 66 to 77 days (for accused marked as no action) and from 69 to 73 days (for accused marked as direct measures) between 2022-23 and 2023-24.

COPFS report to case closed times decreased in financial year 2023-24 compared to 2022-23: from 46 to 21 days for no action and from 68 to 58 days for accused marked as direct measures.