1.2 Trends in numbers of persons implicated in offences, police custody measures and persons imprisoned Source: Etat 4001, Ministry of the Interior and ONDRP post-2009, series B. Aubusson. Field: Serious crimes and offences reported to the State Prosecutor’s Office by the police and gendarmerie (apart from traffic offences). Bad cheques are also excluded for reasons of homogeneity. Metropolitan France Numbers 1 300 000 1 200 000 1 100 000 1 000 000 900 000 Persons implicated in offences 800 000 700 000 600 000 Total number of police custody 500 000 400 000 300 000 200 000 Police custody of more than 24 hours 100 000 1974 1975 1976 1977 1978 1979 1980 1981 1982 1983 1984 1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 0 Note: When counting persons involved in criminal activity or an offence in police investigative procedures ("persons implicated"), one single person may be involved in any one year for different cases and counted several times. For police custody, the charges decided upon are counted (there being the possibility of a number of successive charges for one single person in a case). The source excludes implication for contraventions, driving offences and contraventions uncovered by the specialist services (customs, work visit, fraud investigation etc.) The "Persons imprisoned" column shows the decision at the end of the custody period, the majority of measures resulting in release followed or not afterwards by court proceedings. The persons "imprisoned" have, by necessity, been presented before the court at the end of custody (brought before the court) but all of the referred accused are not then imprisoned by court order. The court or jurisdiction may decide to free the accused. Counting those imprisoned in police statistics presents a few problems; in some places of police jurisdiction all referred accused are counted or have been counted as imprisoned since the investigating police department doesn’t know the results of the appearance before a judge or public prosecutor and possibly the court appearance where individuals are held by another department (when a case is filed before the courts). It is however surprising to see existing, at the criminal investigating department level (national police and gendarmerie) the collection of statistical information relating to criminal justice. But for the time being there are no equivalent statistics at public prosecutor level. 117