Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what data her Department holds on the average length of time people released under criminal investigation have remained under investigation in each year since 2017.

The Home Office collected and published data on the number of individuals released under investigation for the first time in 2021 in the ‘Police Powers and Procedures: Other PACE powers’ publication which can be found here: Police powers and procedures: Other PACE powers, England and Wales, year ending 31 March 2021 - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk).

Data on the length of time an individual was released under investigation, for a subset of police forces who were able to provide data, can be found in Table RUI.01 of the released under investigation data tables. These data are experimental statistics to acknowledge that further development will take place in the future and they should be treated with caution.

The Home Office does not hold data on the number of individuals released under investigation who have subsequently committed criminal offences.