More than 30,000 criminal prosecutions collapsed across England and Wales between 2020 and 2024 due to lost, missing, or damaged evidence, according to Crown Prosecution Service data. The crisis includes 70 homicides and over 550 sexual offences, bringing to light larger concerns involving evidence mishandling by the police.
Data from a study by the University of Leicester and reported by the BBC found that the number of cases recorded as not having sufficient evidence to secure a conviction had risen by 9% to 8,180 from 2020 to 2024.
Cases can be recorded as insufficient evidence for many reasons, including not being able to find an expert witness or to get a medical statement. But it also includes situations where evidence has been lost, damaged or contaminated, where statements were not made available by police and where key evidence was not gathered from the crime scene.
These findings follow years of damning reports about failures throughout evidence storage facilities and procedures. Baroness Casey’s 2023 review into the Metropolitan Police found officers contending with ‘over-stuffed, dilapidated or broken fridges and freezers containing evidence including the rape kits of victims’. The review described an ’overworked and inexperienced workforce’ lacking the ‘infrastructure and specialism’ needed for proper evidence handling.
The BBC reported that an individual interviewed by Lancashire police on the sexual abuse she was experiencing as a nine-year-old was told by the officers that they had lost the recording of her interview. It took her nine years to gather the strength to provide evidence on the case again which eventually secured the conviction of the perpetrators for 30 years. On this experience, she stated, ’It can really affect someone’s mental state. It’s also not protecting other people because these people then don’t get convicted of crimes.’
According to Professor Carol McCartney, an expert in evidence retention, the closure of the Forensic Science Service has had a major impact. The service was closed in 2012 due to funding concerns, and officers were left to archive and catalogue evidence within their own departments. Regarding the strain this has caused on the local level, National Forensics Archive director Alison Fendley stated that ‘police forces have got lots of other things to do – archiving is not their day job and there’s so much material coming and going’.
In response, a representative from the Metropolitan Police said that ‘we continue to make improvements to our recording systems to minimize this risk’. A law commission consultation seeking to remedy this problem has suggested solutions, including re-establishing a national forensic service and introducing potential criminal charges for evidence mishandling.
