The Research Development and Statistics Directorate (RDS) is an integral part of the Home Office.

We provide information that helps Ministers and policy makers take evidence-based decisions, and also help the police, probation service, the courts and immigration officials to do their jobs as effectively as possible. We do so both by maintaining the various statistical services published by the Home Office and by carrying out research ourselves or commissioning others to do so.

We address the concerns of ordinary citizens, whether they are victims of crime or anyone who wants to belong to a fair and secure society.

Within RDS there are teams of skilled specialist staff such as statisticians, researchers, economists, communication professionals and scientists all working together to inform and advise Parliament and the public as well as our Home Office colleagues.

For ease of use these web pages have been designed to be navigated by Subject Area, all you need to do is select an area of interest from the options shown.

First you will see a short description of the work of RDS in any given area, and in time, as the site develops you will be able to read any reports that have been written on that subject.

You can look at our Publications to see what we have done in the past, and look at our Business Plan to see what we will be working on in the future. Look at our National Statistics page for further information on our National Statistics work.

We all hope you find our pages useful, and enjoy visiting our site as it grows.

Remember, we'll keep you up-to-date for no charge - just click here to join our update alert service.

Paul Wiles

DIRECTOR, RDS