How many of those arrested for online communications in the UK were actually charged or convicted each year from 2017–2024?
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Executive summary
Official, centrally published figures that map arrests for online communications offences onto subsequent charges and convictions year-by-year from 2017–2024 do not exist in a single public dataset, so a precise per‑year table cannot be produced from the available reporting [1]. Independent journalism and NGO analysis consistently find arrests have risen since 2017 while prosecutions and convictions for those communications offences have fallen or remained a small fraction of arrests, with scattered force‑level Freedom of Information returns and media FOIs offering the only partial numbers [2] [1] [3].
1. What the question actually demands and why it’s hard to answer
The user asks for a year‑by‑year count of how many people arrested for online communications offences were then charged or convicted from 2017–2024; answering that requires linked data on arrests, charges and outcomes for the specific statutory offences (section 127 Communications Act 2003 and section 1 Malicious Communications Act 1988, plus new Online Safety Act offences from 31 January 2024) — data that central government publishes only in grouped offence categories and not by these specific offence codes, and the Home Office does not publish arrests by the two named offences centrally [1]. The Crown Prosecution Service publishes area‑level and rolling tables that show referrals, charging decisions and conviction rates for types of offences but not a clean national, year‑by‑year joined dataset that maps every arrest to a later charge or conviction for these specific communications offences across 2017–2024 [4] [5].
2. What the public reporting does show about trends
Multiple investigations and NGO reports converge on the same narrative: arrests for communications offences have risen substantially since 2017 while prosecutions and convictions have not kept pace. Freedom House’s 2025 country report summarises that annual arrests have “more than doubled since 2017” and notes that in 2023 fewer than one in ten of those arrests resulted in sentencing [2]. The House of Lords Library briefing repeats the finding that arrests rose post‑pandemic while convictions fell over the past decade, and explicitly warns that the government does not publish central breakdowns by the specific offences at issue [1].
3. Snapshot figures available from FOIs and media analysis
Investigative media FOIs and aggregated reporting give fragmentary numbers: The Times’ FOI analysis—reported in Freedom House and other summaries—found in 2023 there were over 12,000 arrests relating to the two named offences across the forces it surveyed (the Times supplied data from 35 of 43 territorial forces) [2] [1]. Independent trackers and summaries report that in 2024 about 1,160 people were prosecuted for malicious communications and that 137 received immediate custodial sentences (with most custodial terms short) — figures drawn from media analysis of prosecutorial outcomes rather than a single official national table [6]. A separate media report identified 292 people charged under parts of the Online Safety Act for false or threatening communications from the Act’s implementation in 2023 through February 2025 [2].
4. What this means for the precise year‑by‑year answer
Because centralised, offence‑level arrest data are not published and prosecutorial outcome tables from CPS are presented by referral and area rather than as a joined national series for the named communications offences, it is not possible from the supplied sources to produce an authoritative, validated count for each year 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 showing arrests → charges → convictions [1] [4]. The best evidence pattern is clear: arrests rose substantially since 2017, prosecutions and convictions represent a much smaller slice of that base, and in 2023–24 only a minority of arrests progressed to sentencing based on media and NGO analyses [2] [3] [6].
5. How to get the exact per‑year numbers if required
To produce the exact year‑by‑year chain the most direct route is to collate force‑level FOI returns for arrests under section 127 and section 1 (or FOIs for offence codes covering those statutes) for 2017–2024, and to match those against CPS Area Level Data Tables and court outcome publications for charges and convictions for the same offence codes and years — a task Parliament’s Library notes is necessary because central datasets don’t provide the link [1] [4]. Metropolitan Police and other forces do publish or will disclose force‑specific arrest/charge data on request (example FOI for Met arrest/charge/caution data covering 2022–24), but no single official national series exists in the public domain in the provided sources [7] [1].
6. Bottom line
Available, credible public reporting establishes the trend (more arrests since 2017; prosecutions/convictions a much smaller share; in 2023 fewer than one‑in‑ten arrests led to sentencing per Freedom House summary of media FOI work), but the supplied sources do not contain a complete, auditable year‑by‑year table of arrests → charges → convictions for 2017–2024, so an exact numeric answer for each year cannot be generated from these materials alone [2] [1] [6].