Background Quality Report
Last updated: March 2025
Background Quality Assessment
This report provides information about the quality of the data used to produce the Youth Engagement Statictics publication, and any statistics derived from these data.
Introduction
Context for the quality report
The publication, Youth Engagement Statisticsfor Northern Ireland, is produced annually by the Analytical Services Group (ASG), a branch of statisticians from the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency (NISRA) located within the Department of Justice (DoJ),and has been published since 2018/19. The reports are available to download from the DoJ website (opens in a new window) and are published in line with the ASG Customer Service and Engagement Statement, Policy 6 in the Code of Practice for Statistics – Policies and Statements (opens in a new window).
The report presents data on cases relating to young people (aged 10 to 17 years at time of offence) coming into formal contact with the criminal justice system in Northern Ireland for the year 1st April to 31st March and who were assessed by the Public Prosecution Service (PPS) as being suitable for resolution through the Youth Engagement process, an out of court diversionary disposal. As part of the process, the young person will be asked to attend a Youth Engagement clinic with their parent(s) or guardian(s) and solicitor, to meet with youth justice workers from the Youth Justice Agency (YJA) and the police (PSNI), who let them know what the PPS has decided, what it means and the options available to them. A diversion can be agreed at this point. However, if the young person fails to attend or refuses the diversion, the case is returned to PPS for review. As well as providing an overview of the number of cases referred for the process, the report also provides information on the time taken for the process to complete and the subsequent outcomes, as well as information in relation to legal representation at clinics, in relation to victim involvement in the youth engagement process and in overall satisfaction with the process.
The statistics are produced mainly from administrative data sourced from the Criminal Records Viewer (CRV) on the Causeway Data Sharing Mechanism. Causeway is an interconnected information system, launched as a joint undertaking by the Criminal Justice Organisations (CJO) in Northern Ireland. CRV utilises data which originated in the PSNI, PPS and from Northern Ireland Courts and Tribunals Service (NICTS).
To complete the dataset, data relating to Youth Engagement clinic dates and outcomes, sourced from the YJA Management Information System, are matched with the information from Causeway. Information in relation to legal representation at clinics, as well as in relation to victim involvement is sourced from PSNI. Information on satisfaction with the Youth Engagement process is sourced from the YJA. Information is based on data extracted at October each year, for example, data covering 2024/25 (1 April 2024 to 31 March 2025) was extracted at October 2025.
This publication is one of a series of five produced by the team. The others are –
- Courts Prosecutions, Convictions and Out of Court Disposals;
- First Time Entrants to the Criminal Justice System in Northern Ireland;
- Case Processing Time for Criminal Cases Dealt With At Court in Northern Ireland; and
- The Domestic Abuse And Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021 -Prosecutions At Courts and Case Processing Time for Domestic Abuse Related Cases.
The data underpinning the Courts Prosecutions, Convictions and Out of Court Disposals report are also used in the production of the annual ‘First Time Entrants to the Justice System’ publication, which takes data on convictions and out of court diversionary disposals each year and merges it with an historical disposals file.
The First Time Entrants report is published annually on a financial year basis, approximately 18 months after the reporting period. This is because the Prosecutions bulletin is produced on a calendar year basis so publication of First Time Entrants data is delayed until publication of Prosecutions data for the entire period to be reported on has been completed. For example, prosecutions and convictions data for the calendar year 2024 were published in June 2025 and, as these contained figures for the last three months of 2024/25, first time offender data for 2024/25 could not be reported upon until the 2025 prosecutions and convictions data had been completed.
The Case Processing Time report is produced on a narrower dataset, as convictions resulting from breach of court orders, Penalty Notices for Disorder (PND) and most other diversionary disposals are not included.
The Domestic Abuse report presents data on prosecutions, convictions and out of court disposals data, as well as case processing times for cases relating to the domestic abuse offence or any offence aggravated by reason of involving DA, as laid out in The Domestic Abuse and Civil Proceedings Act (Northern Ireland) 2021.It uses a subset of the Prosecutions and Convictions data and is published annually on a financial year basis, approximately 6 months after the reporting period, to allow for update of administrative records and data validation.
Relevance
The degree to which the statistical product meets user needs in both coverage and content.
The information in the publication is used to inform policy decisions within DoJ, as well as to inform requests from other Government organisations and to answer NI Assembly questions and queries from the general public.
User needs are identified through biennial online customer surveys, the most recent undertaken in February 2025 (opens in new window),Customer Survey, 2025 (opens in a new window).
Analysis is provided by age, gender, outcome of youth engagement clinics, time taken for completion of the youth engagement process, legal representation at the clinics and victim involvement. Some comparisons with figures for the previous year are also included.
After YJA has engaged with children via a Youth Engagement clinic, they conduct a satisfaction survey with the children and their parents to monitor their services; analysis regarding satisfaction with the service is also included.
Statistical coverage is restricted to those criminal prosecutions which were brought by the PPS on behalf of the PSNI, the NCA, the Airport Constabulary or Harbour Police. Cases involving young people, where the complainants were government departments, public bodies and private individuals are not included, as their prosecution is beyond the remit of the DoJ.
Young people coming into contact with the police and dealt with by way of informal out-of-court community resolution are not included.
The figures reported are based on individual cases relating to young people coming into formal contact with the justice system. However, some young people may, legitimately, be counted more than once in the figures reported (for example, in 2024/25, the 2,712 cases reported relate to 1,659 young people). Where a young person comes into contact with the justice system on more than one occasion, in relation to separate cases, these have been counted separately.
Accuracy and reliability
The proximity between an estimate and the unknown true value.
These statistics are sourced from administrative systems that encompass data originating from PSNI, PPS, NICTS and YJA. The information is not a sample but a complete data set of all relevant cases recorded within the time period reported on. Each CJO involved records information relevant to them in relation to each case on their own information systems, to allow the processing of that case through that stage of the criminal justice process.
Retrospective updates of records may be missed if the data were downloaded too early. To minimise the impact of this, data are extracted around 24 weeks after the end of the reporting period; this allows for the updating and completion of records across the systems concerned.
There is no absolute means of verifying if CJOs have entered information incorrectly, or not at all. However, as Causeway is the main source of information used to manage day to day business within PSNI, PPS and NICTS and also to communicate important information between these organisations, it needs to be highly accurate. In addition, identified discrepancies are checked against information held in YJA records and in the CRV.
Numerous validation checks are carried out during the course of each year by a number of parties, including NISRA statisticians,to ensure the data are fit for purpose. In relation to potential sources of bias and error, further details can also be found in the QAAD report (opens in a new window).
Users should however bear in mind that the statistics originate from various administrative data sources which have different purposes, aims and objectives and are kept for non statistical purposes for example reviewing and vetting individuals’ criminal records.
The median is used as a measure of average in this report in relation to time taken from the date the young person was charged, or informed they were to be prosecuted, to first date set for the Youth Engagement clinic, as a relatively small number of cases may have taken a significantly long time. Using the median to find the midpoint in the series avoids any possible skew caused by outlying, longer cases.
Users should note that some published figures may not add to the totals due to rounding.
Timeliness and punctuality
Timeliness refers to the time gap between publication and the reference period. Punctuality refers to the gap between planned and actual publication dates.
The annual datasets cover the financial year (1st April to 31st March). The statisticians producing the report continually look for ways that the processes can be streamlined while at the same time maintaining or improving the accuracy of the data. The gap between the reference date and the publication date is due to the time it took to allow administrative records to be updated and to allow for resolution of various data quality issues.
| Report Year | Publication Date |
|---|---|
| 2024/25 | 17/12/25 |
| 2023/24 | 21/11/24 |
| 2022/23 | 16/11/23 |
| 2021/22 | 07/12/22 |
| 2020/21 | 02/12/21 |
| 2019/20 | 18/11/20 |
| 2018/19 | 22/11/19 |
Accessibility and clarity
Accessibility is the ease with which users are able to access the data, also reflecting the format in which the data are available and the availability of supporting information. Clarity refers to the quality and sufficiency of metadata, illustrations and accompanying advice.
Accessibility to the statistics for this publication are in line with those detailed in the ASG Customer Service and Engagement Statement, Policy 6 in the Code of Practice for Statistics – Policies and Statements (opens in a new window).
No issues relating to accessibility or clarity were identified during a Customer Survey undertaken in February 2025, Customer Surveys (opens in a new window).
The report contains contact details for further information and is available to download from the DoJ website (opens in a new window), along with reports from previous years.
The data presented in the report are also available in Open Document Spreadsheet (ODS) format on the DoJ website (opens in a new window).
Explanatory information including sources, discontinuities and missing data have been included.
Coherence and comparability
Coherence is the degree to which data that are derived from different sources or methods, but refer to the same topic, are similar. Comparability is the degree to which data can be compared over time and domain.
The court structure of Northern Ireland and the disposal of cases by Youth Engagement does not equate to that in England, Wales, Scotland or the Republic of Ireland. Direct comparisons between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK and Ireland therefore cannot be made.
There have been no changes to the measurement systems since these statistics were developed, though extra figures, in relation to satisfaction with the youth engagement process, as collated by YJA were included for the first time in 2019/20.
Assessment of user needs and perceptions
The process for finding out about users and uses, and their views on the statistical products.
The ASG Customer Service and Engagement Policy details ASGs customer engagement policy and can be found at Policy 6 in the Code of Practice for Statistics – Policies and Statements (opens in a new window).
An online customer survey was undertaken in February 2025, Customer Surveys (opens in a new window).
The vast majority of respondents (88%) worked for The Northern Ireland Civil Service or other Agency; the remainder were from academia and other non-NICS public sector employees. The most frequently stated reasons for using the publication were policy/performance/resource related, media/public interest related, and to facilitate academic research.
All (100%) respondents said that they were satisfied or very satisfied with the publication overall and that the statistics fully or mostly met their needs.
Regular meetings also take place with key users within the DoJ.
Trade-offs between output and quality components
No trade-offs applied.
Performance, cost and respondent burden
The effectiveness, efficiency and economy of the statistical output.
There is no respondent burden, since the data are held on an administrative system, and data on new cases are automatically collected as part of the Criminal Justice process.
The annual operational cost (staff time) of producing the report is approximately 25 days.
Confidentiality, transparency and security
The procedures and policy used to ensure sound confidentiality, security and transparent practices.
The ASG Confidentiality and Protection Arrangements statement, Policy 2 in the Code of Practice for Statistics – Policies and Statements (opens in a new window), sets out ASG’s arrangement for maintaining the confidentiality of the statistical data used in this publication.
All staff involved are trained on the protocols for protecting and maintaining the confidentiality of the data. NISRA follows the ‘Government Analysis Function’s Data and Analysis Method Review’ in the collection and dissemination of this report.
Data are held on a network that is only accessible to the few statisticians who need access. Printouts containing individual records or small cell sizes are locked away and shredded as soon as possible.
Standard disclosure control methodology is applied to the data. This ensures that information attributable to an individual is not identifiable in any published outputs and that the outputs are only seen by authorised staff prior to their publication.
When necessary, suppression is applied where the number of individuals in a cell is less than three. Suppression is also applied, where necessary, to the next lowest valued cell in order that identification by subtraction is not possible.
The pre-release access list (opens in a new window) for the report is reviewed on an annual basis. The named individuals are checked to ensure that they are the correct contact and that they are available on the day before the release of the report (if they are not then they can nominate a deputy). A guidance document is also sent to those on the revised list explaining to them their obligations about data disclosure prior to the publication of the report.