Research standards
An Assize Research publication. Assize Research publishes four commitments for everything it puts out — evidence first, transparent, accurate, and about the system rather than individuals. This is how this report meets them.
Evidence first
Every figure here is counted from the text of the instruments themselves, and the count is reproducible from the published corpus. Where the evidence runs out, the page says so instead of estimating: a value that was not determined is shown as not determined, never as a zero, and no prosecution figure is not evidence that an offence is unused. 23,878 offences carry the rule that identified them and the confidence in it, on their own pages.
Transparent
Methodology and limits states what was read, how an offence is recognised, why the text read is the text as made, what the classifier scores against a hand-checked set, and the questions this dataset cannot answer at all. It is longer than most readers will want, which is the point: the method is not a summary of itself.
No outside body funded, commissioned or had any say in this report. If research published under this name is ever funded or commissioned by anyone else, it will say so on the piece itself.
The sources are open, named and licensed, so the work can be checked rather than taken on trust: see licence and attribution, and the company's data sources and licensing statement.
Accurate
Researched and written by Rose Traviss. The rules are scored against a hand-labelled set of provisions before a rebuild is published, and the pages are read before a change goes out — but there is no second reader here, and a perfect score on a small labelled set means the rules do not fail on the cases somebody thought to check, not that they never fail. On everything the labelled set does not reach, a reader who knows the provision is the real check, which is why corrections are invited on the page rather than buried in a policy.
Classifications are made by rule from the words of a provision, and a rule that reads words can be wrong about law: a provision that states a penalty for an offence created elsewhere reads very like one that creates an offence, and a court may read either differently again. Where this report is wrong, the way to fix it is a correction, and the correction is made in the dataset so that it survives the next rebuild rather than being patched on one page.
About the system, not individuals
This report is about the criminal law, not about people. It holds no defendants, no prosecutions of named individuals, no register of anybody, and nothing collected from a reader: there are no accounts, no forms and no tracking here. The individuals it names are the ones whose words it quotes from Hansard, as Hansard prints them — a member or minister speaking in Parliament, with the party and office of the day — reused under the Open Parliament Licence, together with any name that appears in the text of an instrument or its explanatory note as published.
The data controller is Assize Data Ltd. If you want to ask about personal data, read the company's data protection page, which covers Assize Research, or write to dataprotection@assizedata.co.uk.
Free to read, and free of everything else
There is no paywall, no registration, no newsletter wall and no advertising. This site sets no cookies, runs no analytics script, loads no fonts, images or scripts from anyone else's server, and runs no client-side JavaScript at all — so there is nothing here to consent to. The company's cookie statement and privacy notice cover the rest of the group.
The report is also usable: no JavaScript means every page works in a text browser and in a screen reader. Accessibility problems are worth telling us about on the same route as a correction, and the company's accessibility statement applies here.
Independent
UK Offence Report is independent research. It is not a government department, court, tribunal or producer of official statistics, and it is not part of or endorsed by one. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by or connected to The National Archives, legislation.gov.uk, either House of Parliament, the Sentencing Council, the Ministry of Justice or HM Courts & Tribunals Service.
Assize Data Ltd is not a law firm and is not regulated by the Solicitors Regulation Authority or the Bar Standards Board. It does not carry out reserved legal activities for others, and it does not give legal advice. Nothing here is legal advice, and nobody should be prosecuted, or decide not to defend a prosecution, on the strength of a page on this site.
Assize Research is a trading name of Assize Data Ltd, a private limited company registered in England and Wales, company number 17510115. Registered office: c/o IWN Accountancy, The Echo Building, 18 Albert Road, Bournemouth BH1 1BZ.