No shared operational identifier or mandatory data standard across criminal justice agencies

Police forces, the CPS, HMCTS, prisons and probation run separate case systems with no common person or case identifier in live operations. MoJ's Data First programme links justice datasets retrospectively, de-identified, for accredited researchers only. The CJS Data Improvement Programme promotes a unified approach with no statutory force, and HMCTS's Common Platform covers courts alone after a troubled rollout. No agency can track a case end to end in real time, attrition such as victim withdrawal between charge and trial is measured by periodic linkage studies rather than operationally, and cross-agency scorecards depend on manual reconciliation. Several other gaps here sit on this one: a whole-system inspectorate and a capacity mechanism both need the data layer.

A backlog nobody can see cannot be managed. Fragmented data hides where the 80,000-case queue sits, prevents victims being told case status, and forces sentencing, remand and diversion policy to be made on lagged, unlinked statistics. It is the enabling capability for nearly every other justice reform.

A statutory duty in the next criminal justice bill mandating common data standards and a single cross-system case and person identifier for police, CPS, courts, prisons and probation, with a published cross-system scorecard, and funded expansion of Data First into a near-real-time operational linkage service under appropriate governance.

// State-led: Instrument: statutory data-standards duty in next criminal justice bill; Data First expansion needs MoJ funding and governance.

No shared identifier lets any agency track a case end to end, which hides the backlog and blocks nearly every other reform, and nothing dates the fix.