How many of the arrests for online communications in the UK between 2021–2024 led to prosecution and conviction?

1. What the headline numbers in the public debate actually are

Parliamentary and NGO reporting have focused on a Times FOI that found police made more than 12,000 arrests in 2023 under section 127 of the Communications Act 2003 and section 1 of the Malicious Communications Act 1988 – the two provisions most cited in debates about “online speech” arrests – and commentators repeatedly emphasise that most of those arrests do not lead to convictions ^{[1] [3]}.

2. How many of those arrests led to prosecution: the available snapshots

The Crown Prosecution Service’s routine quarterly data publications give force‑level prosecution and conviction volumes for broad categories of crime but do not supply a single, public, national time‑series isolating only communications offences across 2021–2024 in the material cited here, which leaves researchers to rely on press‑analysed snapshots: one reporting chart (The Times, summarised by fact‑checkers) indicates roughly 1,160 prosecutions for malicious communications in 2024, implying a very large gap between arrests and the number where prosecutors proceeded ^{[2] [4]}.

3. How many led to conviction: the best published figures

Press and civil‑society summaries cite conviction counts in the low thousands rather than tens of thousands: the same strand of reporting notes 1,119 convictions under section 127 and similar provisions in 2023, and the figures for 2024 show a comparable prosecution volume (around 1,160 prosecutions) with a minority resulting in immediate custodial sentences (137 immediate custodial sentences in 2024, most of them short) — again underlining that convictions are only a fraction of recorded arrests ^[2].

4. Why a precise 2021–2024 total cannot be given from the cited sources

CPS quarterly reports contain tables of prosecutions and convictions by force and rolling years, but the extracts available here are about overall volumes and rates and do not present a consolidated national figure for “communications” offences across every year from 2021–2024 in a single place that can be added up with confidence; House of Lords briefing and Hansard debates point to falling conviction rates and rising arrests but again rely on partial FOI reporting rather than a unified national dataset ^{[4] [5] [6] [7]}.

5. Interpretation and competing narratives

Civil liberties groups and Freedom House see the pattern — large numbers of arrests with far fewer prosecutions and convictions — as evidence of a chilling effect and of policing priorities being applied to online speech ^{[1] [3]}, while police and prosecutors point to legal complexity, the range of behaviours captured by the statutes (including domestic abuse‑linked communications), and evidential thresholds set out in CPS guidance that constrain prosecutions ^{[6] [4]}. Both views are supported by the available material: arrests rose sharply in 2023 per FOI, prosecutions and convictions remained much lower and, by prosecutors’ account, must meet the Code for Crown Prosecutors tests ^{[1] [2] [4]}.

6. Bottom line — the answer, with caveats

Using the accessible reporting: for 2023 there were over 12,000 arrests for the named communications offences, while prosecutions and convictions for malicious/communications offences in the same space were roughly in the low thousands (about 1,160 prosecutions and approximately 1,119 convictions reported in the press summaries for 2023–2024) — meaning the large majority of arrests did not result in prosecution or conviction according to the cited sources; however, a definitive, audited aggregate total for arrests→prosecutions→convictions across the full 2021–2024 period cannot be produced from the documents provided because the CPS and police publications quoted do not publish a single consolidated national series for those specific offences covering every year 2021–2024 ^{[1] [2] [4] [5]}.