How many people were arrested for csam in the UK in 2024

1. What the question actually asks and why it matters

Asking “How many people were arrested for CSAM in the UK in 2024” is a request for a precise, offence-specific arrest count for a given year, which matters because it informs public understanding of enforcement levels, resource allocation, and trends — but the sources provided do not contain a consolidated, offence-level national arrest tally for CSAM in 2024, only broader arrest datasets and scattered case-level reports ^{[1] [2]}.

2. What national arrest data the government publishes — and its limits

The Home Office publishes comprehensive arrest statistics for England and Wales (for example, 720,506 arrests in the year ending March 2024), but these datasets as presented in the supplied sources are aggregated across all offence types and are not broken down in the material provided to isolate CSAM-specific arrests for calendar year 2024 ^{[1] [2]}. Parliamentary debates and policy documents underscore the scale of known CSAM material held by law enforcement — “almost 30 million unique CSAM files” — but that reference is about files, not arrests, and does not supply a per-year arrest number for 2024 ^[5].

3. Case-level reporting that touches 2024 but doesn’t equal a national total

Multiple pieces of reporting document notable arrests involving CSAM in 2024: an arrest of a 19‑year‑old in the UK (Cameron Finnigan) in March 2024 who was later reported to have pleaded guilty to possession of CSAM among other offences ^[6], and international operations linked to AI‑generated CSAM where the main suspect was arrested in November 2024 though the wider joint arrests occurred in 2025 (Operation Cumberland) — these are important signals of enforcement activity but do not provide a nationwide arrest count for 2024 ^[3].

4. The rising tide of AI‑generated CSAM reports complicates the picture

The Internet Watch Foundation (IWF) and analysts documented a sharp rise in confirmed reports of AI‑generated CSAM — 245 confirmed reports in 2024 versus 51 in 2023 according to sources cited in government materials and academic commentary — a surge that has driven new operational priorities and legislative proposals, yet those report counts are about image reporting and detection, not arrests; the available materials do not show the corresponding number of arrests tied specifically to those 245 confirmed AI‑generated incidents ^{[4] [7]}.

5. Why a precise UK-wide arrest number for CSAM in 2024 is not available in the supplied reporting

The absence of a single, verifiable arrest total in the provided sources stems from fragmentation of data across territorial police forces, specialised agencies (e.g., the National Crime Agency), and international joint operations; Freedom of Information requests and force-level disclosures exist but are patchy ^{[8] [9]}, and aggregated Home Office arrest statistics in the sources are not parsed by offence type at the granularity needed to extract a standalone CSAM arrest total for 2024 ^[1].

6. Bottom line and where to look next for a definitive number

Based on the supplied reporting, it is not possible to supply an exact count of people arrested for CSAM in the UK in 2024; the material documents rising reports of AI‑generated CSAM and several notable arrests but lacks a consolidated national arrest figure for that specific offence and year ^{[6] [4] [3] [1]}. For a definitive answer, requests should be directed to Home Office crime statistics broken down by offence code for the 2024 calendar year, the National Crime Agency and individual police force FOI disclosures, and the IWF for conversions between reports and enforcement actions — none of which are contained in the supplied sources.