Cases collapsing by the thousands due to lost police evidence

Murder and rape trials among serious cases being thrown out

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More than 30,000 criminal prosecutions in England and Wales have collapsed in the past four years due to missing, lost or damaged evidence, including dozens of murder and hundreds of sexual offence cases.

550 sexual offences were among those abandoned. And the crisis is worsening. The proportion of cases failing due to missing or mishandled evidence has risen steadily every year since 2020, with experts warning the system is buckling under the weight of digital data, poor evidence management and shrinking police resources.

Britain's biggest force, the Metropolitan Police, has been named as the worst offender, with one in every 20 prosecutions between 2022 and 2024 collapsing due to missing evidence - more than twice the national average. At least one murder prosecution failed in nearly a third of all police forces during that same period.

When a crime is reported, the police will investigate by collating evidence and presenting a case file to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). For more serious offences, the CPS will decide whether it has a prospect of conviction and whether it is in the public interest to do so.