This bulletin reports on investigative outcomes that police forces have assigned to notifiable offences recorded by the police in England and Wales (excluding Devon and Cornwall) between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2023. Section 2 reports on trends in numbers and proportions of offences assigned an outcome, by both offence and outcome type.

Key Findings

• police recorded crime levels increased for most crime types in the year ending March 2023 compared with the previous year, up to 5.5 million offences, excluding fraud and computer misuse (a 5% rise) and up to 1.2 million fraud and computer misuse offences (a 15% rise)
• the proportion of crimes (excluding fraud and computer misuse) resulting in a charge and/or summons this year increased slightly to 5.7% (compared with 5.5% the previous year), halting the long-term downward trend since the introduction of the Outcomes Framework in the year ending March 2015, when 16% of crimes were resolved with a charge and/or summons
• the most common reason for a case being closed remained no suspect having been identified, with 39.3% of cases closed this way in the year ending March 2023; an increase from 36.7% in the year ending March 2022
• the proportion of offences not yet assigned an outcome decreased from 11.2% last year to 8.0% this year, returning to levels reported in the year ending March 2021 (at 7.8%)