What the crime data can honestly tell you, and what it cannot.
What the crime data can honestly tell you about immigration, and what it can't. No invented statistics, in either direction.
16 figures, each with its official source.
447,514 charges or summonses against 5.2 million recorded offences. Rising: the rate was 6.4% in the year to March 2024 and 7.3% the year after. Police recorded crime is not designated as Accredited Official Statistics.
3,588 on remand, 6,458 sentenced, 441 non-criminal. A raw count is not a rate, no population denominator, no controls for age/sex/remand.
Albanian ~9% · Irish ~7% · Polish ~7% · Romanian ~6% · Indian ~4% Shares WITHIN the foreign-national prison group. Several are large UK migrant communities, bigger communities contribute more to every count; this reflects community size, not offending propensity.
Largely no, the UK does not hold breakdowns of crime by migrant or asylum status The single most important fact here: because there is no reliable offending rate by immigration status, any claim that migrants offend more (or less) than others cannot be supported by official UK statistics.
Immigration has generally NOT been found to raise crime rates Effects where found are small and shaped by labour-market opportunity, not nationality or ethnicity. No robust evidence immigration systematically raises crime.
Disparities exist but do NOT establish propensity to offend The government's own statisticians warn disparities reflect confounders, age/sex, deprivation, geography, offence mix, and differential policing, none controlled for. Not evidence of propensity.
Confirmed by the Jay Report (Rotherham, 2014) and reviews into Rochdale, Telford and Oldham The Jay Report estimated ~1,400 children were sexually exploited in Rotherham (1997–2013), with convictions and serious case reviews in several towns. The debate is about national scale and offender characteristics.
Published 16 June 2025; 12 recommendations, all accepted, including a national inquiry Commissioned by the Prime Minister in January 2025; conducted by Louise Casey, Baroness Casey of Blackstock.
'Disproportionate numbers of men from Asian ethnic backgrounds amongst suspects' in the three force areas examined (Greater Manchester, West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire) A LOCAL finding from three force areas, the same audit stresses national data is insufficient. Both halves matter.
W. Midlands operation (2015): 62% of 75 suspects recorded Pakistani, 12% White. Greater Manchester: of 269 known suspects, 52% recorded 'Asian', 38% 'White' These are counts of SUSPECTS (not convicted offenders) in single local operations, small samples, differing definitions, known recording biases. They cannot be added up or generalised; the audit says national ethnicity data is insufficient to draw any conclusions.
Ethnicity is 'still not recorded for two-thirds of perpetrators' and 'not sufficient to allow any conclusions at the national level' An official warning against drawing national ethnic conclusions from incomplete records.
No, so specific '% Pakistani' figures circulating in the media are not nationally evidenced Improving this data is one of the audit's recommendations; the national inquiry will examine offender ethnicity.
Group-based 'grooming gang' offending is a smaller subset of all child sexual abuse, much of which is online or within families; Home Office analysis recorded most group-based CSE offenders as White Around 40% of police-recorded child sexual abuse (2023/24) was online. The Home Office 'majority White' finding comes with its own data-quality caveats. Context to keep the phenomenon in proportion without minimising it.
Chaired by Baroness Longfield; began 31 March 2026, up to three years (England & Wales) Powers to compel evidence; national hearings plus local investigations (incl. Oldham, Bradford, Keighley). Remit includes offender ethnicity and why data has been so poor.