Who is ending up in the magistrates courts in the wake of the riots?

In an indication of the tough justice being meted out to people accused of offences related to the riots, a Guardian analysis of over 1,000 cases before magistrates courts so far has found the majority of defendants being remanded in custody - even when they have pleaded guilty to relatively minor offences.

As hundreds of cases fly through specially-convened night sittings of magistrates courts, the Guardian is embarking on a project to catalogue who is going to court and what is happening to them. And, in an unprecedented act of government transparency, the Ministry of Justice has instructed Magistrates Courts across the country to provide full court results details of all riot-related cases. These are compiled by the individual courts themselves and have never been released on such a scale before.

They give unrivalled details of the inner workings of England's lower tier courts. They record each defendant's name, age, address, charge, plea and sentence - as well as if the case is remanded in jail or committed to the crown court for a jury trial.

Access to the data means for the first time we can work out what kinds of people are facing court, how old they are, where they live and how severe their punishments are, providing a unique insight into the criminal justice system following the worst riots in living memory.

The Guardian has been given detailed reports from all the biggest courts dealing with riot-related offences: Westminster, Camberwell and Highbury, in London - plus Birmingham, Manchester, Liverpool and Croydon. We have also collated reported details from another 14 magistrates courts around England.

People facing court charged with riot-related offences are overwhelmingly young, male and unemployed - although we are assuming that last from the lack of jobs recorded in court reports. Those who are pleading guilty are receiving prison sentences - or being passed onto higher courts for stiffer sentencing. Out of the 1.7m cases heard in magistrates courts last year, only 3.5% were remanded to jail, and about 10% of violent crime cases get remanded. These figures from this week show a rate of 50-60%.

The accused have been charged mainly with burglary or violent disorder, we have not yet identified a single charge of riot - which is also an offence.

We wanted to know the answers to some of the key questions: how old are they? Are they in work? Where do they come from?

We have compiled this list from magistrate court sessions either attended today and yesterday by our own reporters or those reported by news agencies or compiled especially for us.

This list covers just over the majority of court cases connected to the riots, that is 400 people's court appearances recorded out of the 1,297 people that have appeared in court over the last week. We will keep updating it as over 2,000 people that have been arrested since the UK riots began pass through the judicial system.

The Met Police earlier reported that around half of the people who have appeared in court so far charged with being involved in the riots in London are under the age of 18. Our analysis also emphasises the youth of those arrested and charged. The vast majority of those in court were aged under 25 - with many between 11 and 17. Only a very small number were aged over 30.

The Ministry of Justice said in cases where the age of the defendant is known, 83% are adults and 17% are under 18. Our data shows that just over a quarter of the cases are for under 18 - but this could be skewed by a large representation of youth courts cases, and also by the fact that we have ages for 946, rather than the full 1,000 cases on the database.

The defendants are overwhelmingly male - we have only found a few women in court so far, some of whom were 16 or under.

For those not familiar with the English court system, Magistrates courts are the most junior for criminal offences. They have limited powers of sentencing and often pass on the most serious cases to the Crown courts. If defendants are forced to wait in prison for their next hearing, that is called being on remand.

A third of the cases we've looked at so far have been referred up to the Crown Court.

We could find only a few cases where bail had been granted - and those were mainly children under 18.

Meanwhile, only a fifth of cases were given a sentence. The majority of those were custodial - an average of four months each, so far. We have identified only a few fines, including a group of 18-year-olds from Liverpool who were arrested by police wearing face masks.

Are the defendants unemployed? We don't have details for all cases, but the majority do appear not to be working. But there is a smattering of occupations in here: teaching assistant, students, chef, accounts clerk and a scaffolder.

While the Guardian works on a wider data-driven project analysing the causes and consequences of the England riots, the court list has been removed from public view. The data will be republished alongside the findings of this work. All graphics and maps based on the document will still function.

SOURCES AND ADDITIONAL REPORTING: Federica Cocco, Helen Clifton, Siraj Datoo, National News, Newsteam, Raymonds Press, Central News, Magistrates Courts, John Burn-Murdoch, Shane Dean, Paula Cerutti, Farah Jassat, Anna Smith, Sarah Marsh, Freya Gibbs and Ministry of Justice

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