Britain's asylum data reveals Afghan sex offence rates far lower than claimed
· World · Hindustan Times, The Economist
In Bristol last November, three Afghan men and a 17-year-old boy gang-raped a 17-year-old girl after grooming her on Snapchat and plying her with alcohol; they fled to France but were returned and convicted, receiving long jail terms on October 6th. The Migration Observatory’s analysis of Ministry of Justice data from 2010–2024 found that just 409 of 106,000 sex offences in England and Wales were committed by people identifying as Afghan — just 0.39% of the total. The widely cited claim that Afghans are 'twenty times more likely' to commit such crimes rests on an unreliable ONS population estimate extrapolated from fewer than 60 individuals. The government does not publish crime rates by immigration status, and the police’s recording of offenders’ nationality is described as messy.
Why it matters
The misleading 'twenty times' statistic fuels public suspicion of asylum-seekers and underpins calls for stricter immigration controls, while the actual data shows Afghan offenders represent a tiny fraction of recorded sex offences.
Read the original report — Hindustan Times
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