Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research > Publications & Evaluations
CCS2019

Author NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research
Published June 2020
Report Type NSW Criminal Courts Statistics
Subject Court statistics
Keywords Statistics, Criminal Courts

Summary

Aim

The statistics presents information on the characteristics of defendants dealt with by NSW criminal courts. This includes information on the offences, case outcomes and sentences associated with those defendants.

Abstract

The excel data file shows:

Volume
  • NSW criminal courts finalised charges against 138,215 defendants in 2019. This is statistically unchanged from the previous year (140,080 in 2018).
  • Over the past 5 years the volume of finalisations has grown in the District Court; up by an average of 5.1% a year from 3,883 in 2015 to 4,736 in 2019. This growth is largely due to an increase in sentence finalisations.
  • Over the same period, the volume of finalisations decreased in the Children's Court by an average 2.8% a year from 6,728 in 2015 to 6,006 in 2019.
  • Local Court finalisations have remained stable.
Sentencing
  • NSW Sentencing reforms, which came into effect in September 2018, have significantly increased the proportion of proven offenders being sentenced to a supervised community order from 17.0% in 2018 to 22.0% in 2019.
Court Delay
  • The median time taken to finalise a trial in the District Court in 2019 was unchanged from 2018 but 65 days longer than in 2015 (median days from arrest to trial finalisation in 2015 was 658 days versus 722.5 days in 2019).
  • The median time to finalise defended criminal matters in the Local Court increased in 2019, up from 196 days in 2018 to 202 days.