Journey times in the Scottish Criminal Justice System: 2022 to 2023

7. Accused offered COPFS disposals

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, which can be a warning letter, a conditional fixed penalty or diversion from prosecution or ii) the case can be closed with no action by COPFS (if for example there is insufficient evidence to justify prosecution).

Before the COVID-19 pandemic (up to and including 2019-20), 90% of accused reported to COPFS which were not marked for prosecution in court had their cases closed within one year of the offence being committed (Figure 1). This has fallen to 81% in the years during and following the pandemic.

Over the entire period covered by this data set, fewer than 0.5% of accused waited more than 5 years for their case to be closed by COPFS.

Figure 2 (and supplementary table 1) shows the median times from offence to COPFS direct measure or no action by financial year.

The median journey times for accused marked “No action” by COPFS increased by 62 days to 239 days (35%) between 2019-20 and 2021-22. In 2022/23, this time has increased to 249 days (10 days, 4% increase).

In 2021-22, the median journey time for cases marked by COPFS for direct measures increased by 27 days (19%) to 171 days when compared to 2019-20. In 2022-23, this time has decreased by 1 day to 170 days.