Defendants in Magistrates Court and Royal Court (FOI)

​Request

Over the five years to the end of 2015, how many:

A

Defendants were tried in the Magistrates Court and the Royal Court?

B

Defendants were found guilty and how many were found innocent in the Magistrates Court and the Royal Court?

C

Defendants required interpreters in the Magistrates Court and the Royal Court?

D

Defendants who required interpreters were found guilty and how many were found innocent in the Magistrates Court and the Royal Court?

E

Defendants required interpreters for each of the following languages:

• Portuguese

• Polish

• Romanian

• Czech

• French

• Spanish

• German

• Italian

Response

A to E

The statistics we maintain for activity in the Magistrate’s Court and the Royal Court are published in Statistical Digest appendices to the Court Service Annual Report each year. The Annual Reports may be found on the www.gov.je website on the ‘Judicial Greffe reports and documents page’ at the following link:

Judicial Greffe reports and documents 

While these statistics cover the number of cases and persons who came to the Magistrate’s or Youth Court and numbers for those committed to the Royal Court they do not provide any further breakdown by other details such as the use of interpreters, how a defendant pleaded,  whether a case went to trial on all or some of the charges to which the defendant entered a plea of not guilty or whether a defendant was found guilty or not guilty in relation to each charge on which they proceeded to trial.

We do not hold the figures requested. To extract the data from our records would require reading each case file to establish for each defendant whether they went to trial, whether they were found guilty on each charge and the details of any requirement for interpreters at any stage of the process. From the Court Service Annual Reports it may be seen that there were more than 2,000 cases in each of the five years to the end of 2015, so there would be more than 10,000 cases to inspect to extract the data. This inspection of the records for each case would exceed the 12.5 hour time cost limit set out in Article 16 of the Freedom of Information (Jersey) Law 2011.