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Cooper calls for more robust data on nationality of criminalspublished at 10:58 British Summer Time
Robert Cuffe
BBC Verify head of statistics
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has told BBC Radio 4 Today there should be “more transparency” about the nationality and immigration status of people accused of crimes.
Her comments come after Conservative shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick told the same programme yesterday that “in London, 40% last year of all of the sexual crimes were committed by foreign nationals, despite the fact that they only make up 25% of the population”.
Yesterday we described where the data comes from and why it can’t tell us whether foreign nationals as a group are more likely to commit crimes than British nationals without taking into account the different ages of different populations.
These warnings apply particularly for small groups such as Eritrean or Afghan nationals. They are much rarer in both the Metropolitan Police data (10 and 16 of the 1,600 sexual offences charged or cautioned last year) and population statistics.
When you’re dealing with small numbers, minor shifts or weaknesses in the data have an outsized effect: taking four offences from the Afghan total would be a 25% reduction.
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