Latest Ministry of Justice data shows the expanding use of AI transcription by probation staff
Justice Transcribe data published by the Ministry of Justice and HM Prison and Probation Service shows the expanding use of an AI-enabled transcription and meeting summarisation tool by probation staff in England and Wales.
The publication was last updated on August 10, 2026, and now includes data covering the period from October 7, 2025, to July 29, 2026. The publication provides transparency data on how Justice Transcribe has been used by probation staff.
The latest update adds a new dataset covering use of the technology through 29 July 2026. Earlier datasets covered the period to 2 June 2026 and, before that, to 12 February 2026.
Justice Transcribe is designed to record and summarise meetings involving probation staff. The technology is intended to reduce the administrative work associated with recording supervision discussions, allowing practitioners to spend less time manually producing notes.
The scale of use has increased significantly since the first transparency data was published. The initial dataset recorded more than 150,000 meetings summarised between 7 October 2025 and 12 February 2026. The Ministry of Justice said the figure represented meetings in which the product was used to generate a meeting summary during the reporting period.
The same initial publication used an operational assumption that Justice Transcribe could save around 10 minutes per meeting. Applied to 150,000 meetings, this produced an indicative saving of about 1.5 million minutes, or 25,000 hours. The department expressly described that calculation as an illustrative estimate rather than a formal statistical estimate, noting that it did not account for differences in meeting length, meeting type, user practice or summary quality.
By the period ending 2 June 2026, more than 800,000 meetings had been summarised using Justice Transcribe. A Ministry of Justice response to Parliament stated that this represented around 130,000 hours of time saved, based on the department’s estimate of approximately 10 minutes saved per meeting.
The latest publication extends the reporting period to 29 July, providing the most recent official transparency data on the tool’s use. The Ministry of Justice has separately reported that Justice Transcribe has now been used more than one million times by probation staff across England and Wales and has saved more than 160,000 hours.
For solicitors and other legal professionals working with probation-related cases, the practical significance is the growing use of AI-assisted record production within the Probation Service. Justice Transcribe is being used to support the creation of records from meetings rather than simply serving as a conventional administrative system.
The published figures should, however, be read alongside the department’s stated limitations on its time-saving calculations. The reported time savings are based on an operational assumption rather than a formal statistical assessment, and the original transparency publication cautioned that actual savings can vary according to meeting length, meeting type and how users employ the system.
The publication applies to England and Wales and remains part of the Ministry of Justice’s transparency reporting on Justice Transcribe. The latest dataset, covering 7 October 2025 to 29 July 2026, was added to GOV.UK on 10 August 2026.