This question was answered on 22nd May 2019
The proportion of guilty pleas (where plea was known) has slowly been declining, from 74% in 2014 to 69% for white defendants, and from 61% in 2014 to 57% for BAME defendants in 2018.
Data is only available for defendants dealt with at Crown Court (not all defendants) for indictable offences.
The proportion of defendants who entered a guilty plea by ethnicity (2008 – 2018) can be found in the Crown court data tool at the following link:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/802313/crown-court-tool-2018.xlsx
- Remove the ‘Values’ field from Rows
- Drag the ‘Ethnicity’ field into Rows
- Drag the ‘Total for Trial’ field into Values
- Filter to ’01: Guilty Plea’ in the ‘Plea at Crown Court’ field for the number of defendants that entered a guilty plea
- Filter to ’01: Guilty Plea’ and ’02: Not Guilty plea’ in the ‘Plea at Crown Court’ field number of defendants that entered a plea overall (where plea was known)
- The number of BAME defendants can be defined by combining ’02: Black’, ’03: Asian’, ’04: Mixed’ and ’05: Chinese and other’ rows. The number of white defendants who entered a guilty plea each year can be found in the ‘01: White’ row.
- The proportion of defendants who entered a guilty plea can be found by dividing the number of guilty pleas by the number of overall pleas for the relevant ethnicity rows.