Ministry of Justice Data First: Cross-Justice System - England and Wales
The new Data First: Cross-Justice System dataset for England and Wales links Ministry of Justice (MoJ) data from across the justice system. It provides an unprecedented opportunity to explore cross-cutting questions about the overlaps and intersections between users of different types of justice services, as well as repeat users within services.
De-identified data is available on an individual person- and case-level; from criminal prosecutions in the magistrates’ courts and Crown Court, through to periods spent in prison custody or under supervision of the probation service. Additionally, where data quality and linkage allows, the cross-justice system link has also been expanded to enable family and civil courts data to be linked with criminal justice data sources for the first time. Content has also been refreshed to now include data up to 2023.
The Data First: Cross-Justice System – England and Wales dataset can be used to address a variety of potential research questions, such as:
- How can we better understand how problems in different parts of the justice system interact with and reinforce each other?
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Who are the ‘repeat’ users across the justice system?
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Does involvement in other areas of the justice system influence criminal (re)offending?
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What works to enable effective outcomes across the justice system?
The MoJ’s Areas of Research Interest sets out further details on the key evidence gaps it is hoped the data will help to address.
Offender assessment system
The cross-justice system dataset also includes data from the offender assessment system (OASys). The offender assessment system is used in prisons and probation services to capture the risks and needs of offenders, as well as specialist assessments covering areas such as domestic violence and sexual offending. The OASys data includes over 1,100 variables and can be used to address important research gaps for policymakers, by yielding deeper insights into the characteristics of those convicted of offences in England and Wales for the first time.
The Data First programme is also enhancing the linking of justice data with data from other government departments, including the Department for Education.
Engagement work with the academic community has expanded recently via a series of university roadshows, which raise awareness of and encourage applications to use the datasets. Data First is also developing new resources and training courses to provide overviews of the data and the application process. These will be supported by synthetic versions of linked data assets that will also enable early proposals and analytical plans to be developed from a more informed perspective.
On-going academic collaboration was also recognised with the Data First team being awarded the Collaboration Award at the Analysis in Government Awards 2024, for their work ‘harnessing the power of linked data and academic collaboration to improve justice outcomes’.
Accessing the data
The Data First: Cross-Justice System – England and Wales dataset can be accessed via both the Office for National Statistics (ONS) Secure Research Service and the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank.