How have conviction and sentencing rates for communications offences changed year‑by‑year across the last decade, by offence type?
Executive summary
Government time‑series published by the Ministry of Justice and analysed in recent parliamentary briefing show that convictions and sentencings for communications offences — principally section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 and section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 — have fallen substantially over the last decade, even as policing activity and public attention on online posts rose after the pandemic [1] [2]. Official and operational data sources confirm the broad downward trajectory for convictions and custodial outcomes, but they also reveal important caveats about how offence categories are recorded and the limits of CPS operational management data for precise year‑by‑year breakdowns [3] [4] [5].
1. The headline trend: falling convictions and sentencings for communications offences
Ministry of Justice time‑series reviewed in a House of Lords Library briefing show a “dramatic” decline in convictions and sentencings for the selected communications offences over the past decade, a trend reiterated in independent reporting and data visualisations hosted by Justice Data [1] [2]. Independent fact‑checks and secondary reporting quantify that decline in snapshots — for example, one analysis cites convictions under section 127 and similar provisions dropping from roughly 1,995 in 2015 to about 1,119 in 2023 — but the full official time‑series is contained in government datasets rather than a single narrative table [6] [2].
2. Arrests, prosecutions and the apparent disconnect with convictions
Several reports flag a divergence: arrests recorded under communications‑related statutes increased around and after the pandemic in some policing datasets, yet most arrests did not lead to prosecution and prosecutions resulted in fewer convictions and even fewer custodial sentences [1] [7] [6]. Operational CPS publications confirm that the CPS holds management information on referrals, charges and conviction/non‑conviction outcomes that can indicate this gap, but the CPS explicitly does not publish those figures as official statistics — the Ministry of Justice and Home Office hold the official datasets [3] [4] [5].
3. Sentencing: custodial sentences became rarer and typically short where imposed
Where convictions did occur, immediate custody was uncommon. Reporting drawing on court data finds that in 2024 about 1,160 people were prosecuted for malicious communications but only 137 received immediate custodial sentences, most of those terms being under two months [6]. Sentencing guidance and council rules emphasise community orders and proportionate responses for lower‑harm communications offences, and the Sentencing Council’s offence‑specific guidance continues to direct courts toward non‑custodial disposals where appropriate [8]. Broader sentencing reviews also note relative stability in sentencing patterns overall, suggesting the decline in custodial outcomes for communications offences sits within a wider context of sentencing practice [9].
4. Why the year‑by‑year numbers are hard to pin down in this briefing
The public sources available are consistent about direction — a fall in convictions and sentencings — but do not provide a complete, corroborated year‑by‑year table by offence subtype within the materials supplied here. Justice Data and the Ministry of Justice do host time‑series tools that allow precise annual counts, but the summaries cited in parliamentary and CPS material emphasise trends rather than publishing full offence‑by‑offence annual breakdowns in narrative form [2] [10] [3]. The CPS management information is useful but explicitly non‑statistical and has caveats about principal offence coding that affect longitudinal comparisons [3] [4].
5. Competing explanations and implicit agendas
Explanations for the decline vary: some commentators argue charging and prosecutorial discretion shifted toward summary or alternative offences and the CPS reserves more serious charges for the worst cases, which would reduce recorded convictions under the named statutes [11]. Others point to policing practice changes, resource pressures, and increasing triage of online reports. Political narratives sometimes conflate rising public outrage or arrest counts with judicial outcomes; parliamentary analysis and fact‑checking show that those assertions can overstate conviction or sentencing volumes if they rely only on arrest figures [1] [7] [6].
6. Bottom line and where to look next
The best, evidence‑based conclusion supported by the supplied reporting is that convictions and sentencings for communications offences have fallen year‑on‑year across the past decade, with custodial sentences becoming rarer and generally short when imposed, while arrests and police attention rose in some years; however, producing an authoritative year‑by‑year numeric table by offence type requires direct extraction from the Ministry of Justice/Justice Data time‑series and cross‑referencing CPS management tables due to coding and publication limitations in operational summaries [1] [2] [3].