Our website uses an automatic service to translate our content into different languages. These translations should be used as a guide only. See our Accessibility page for further information.
New South Wales Criminal Courts Statistics 2019
Date published: 01 Jun 2020
Author: NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research
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.