@inproceedings{sedighi-etal-2026-temporal,
title = "Temporal and Geographic Patterns in Child Sexual Abuse Prosecutions: A Decade of Magistrates' Court Records from {E}ngland and {W}ales",
author = "Sedighi, Tabassom and
McSweeney, Timothy and
Lundrigan, Samantha",
editor = "Calabrese, Agostina and
Davidson, Thomas and
de Kock, Christine and
Khurana, Urja and
Marchiori Manerba, Marta and
Piot, Paloma and
Talat, Zeerak",
booktitle = "Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms ({WOAH})",
month = oct,
year = "2026",
address = "Budapest, Hungary",
publisher = "Association for Computational Linguistics",
url = "https://aclanthology.org/2026.woah-1.15/",
pages = "173--177",
ISBN = "979-8-89176-487-3",
abstract = "This paper presents an analysis of ten years (2013{--}-2023) of magistrates' court data on child sexual abuse (CSA) prosecutions in England and Wales. A dataset comprising 69,685 cases was examined to identify trends in prosecution volumes, offence classifications, defendant counts, and the geographical distribution of cases. Fourteen Home Office offence-group codes were mapped to the published Home Office/VKPP offence classification to ensure accurate interpretation of the legal offence categories.\par The findings indicate that the number of prosecuted CSA cases increased steadily until reaching a peak in 2017, followed by a marked decline that began two years before the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the decrease cannot be attributed solely to pandemic-related disruption. The analysis also identifies a notable geographical pattern: unlike crime in general, prosecuted CSA cases are relatively dispersed across neighbourhoods rather than concentrated within a small number of locations. This unexpected finding suggests that the spatial distribution of prosecuted CSA differs from that of many other offence types. Taken together, the temporal and geographical patterns highlight the value of magistrates' court records as a source of evidence for understanding prosecuted CSA and contribute to ongoing discussions about the scale, distribution, and measurement of child sexual abuse in England and Wales."
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<abstract>This paper presents an analysis of ten years (2013—2023) of magistrates’ court data on child sexual abuse (CSA) prosecutions in England and Wales. A dataset comprising 69,685 cases was examined to identify trends in prosecution volumes, offence classifications, defendant counts, and the geographical distribution of cases. Fourteen Home Office offence-group codes were mapped to the published Home Office/VKPP offence classification to ensure accurate interpretation of the legal offence categories.\par The findings indicate that the number of prosecuted CSA cases increased steadily until reaching a peak in 2017, followed by a marked decline that began two years before the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the decrease cannot be attributed solely to pandemic-related disruption. The analysis also identifies a notable geographical pattern: unlike crime in general, prosecuted CSA cases are relatively dispersed across neighbourhoods rather than concentrated within a small number of locations. This unexpected finding suggests that the spatial distribution of prosecuted CSA differs from that of many other offence types. Taken together, the temporal and geographical patterns highlight the value of magistrates’ court records as a source of evidence for understanding prosecuted CSA and contribute to ongoing discussions about the scale, distribution, and measurement of child sexual abuse in England and Wales.</abstract>
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%0 Conference Proceedings
%T Temporal and Geographic Patterns in Child Sexual Abuse Prosecutions: A Decade of Magistrates’ Court Records from England and Wales
%A Sedighi, Tabassom
%A McSweeney, Timothy
%A Lundrigan, Samantha
%Y Calabrese, Agostina
%Y Davidson, Thomas
%Y de Kock, Christine
%Y Khurana, Urja
%Y Marchiori Manerba, Marta
%Y Piot, Paloma
%Y Talat, Zeerak
%S Proceedings of the 10th Workshop on Online Abuse and Harms (WOAH)
%D 2026
%8 October
%I Association for Computational Linguistics
%C Budapest, Hungary
%@ 979-8-89176-487-3
%F sedighi-etal-2026-temporal
%X This paper presents an analysis of ten years (2013—2023) of magistrates’ court data on child sexual abuse (CSA) prosecutions in England and Wales. A dataset comprising 69,685 cases was examined to identify trends in prosecution volumes, offence classifications, defendant counts, and the geographical distribution of cases. Fourteen Home Office offence-group codes were mapped to the published Home Office/VKPP offence classification to ensure accurate interpretation of the legal offence categories.\par The findings indicate that the number of prosecuted CSA cases increased steadily until reaching a peak in 2017, followed by a marked decline that began two years before the COVID-19 pandemic, suggesting that the decrease cannot be attributed solely to pandemic-related disruption. The analysis also identifies a notable geographical pattern: unlike crime in general, prosecuted CSA cases are relatively dispersed across neighbourhoods rather than concentrated within a small number of locations. This unexpected finding suggests that the spatial distribution of prosecuted CSA differs from that of many other offence types. Taken together, the temporal and geographical patterns highlight the value of magistrates’ court records as a source of evidence for understanding prosecuted CSA and contribute to ongoing discussions about the scale, distribution, and measurement of child sexual abuse in England and Wales.
%U https://aclanthology.org/2026.woah-1.15/
%P 173-177
Markdown (Informal)
[Temporal and Geographic Patterns in Child Sexual Abuse Prosecutions: A Decade of Magistrates’ Court Records from England and Wales](https://aclanthology.org/2026.woah-1.15/) (Sedighi et al., WOAH 2026)
ACL