Foreign Nationals ‘Twice as Likely’ to Be Arrested Than Britons

Foreign nationals are up to twice as likely to be arrested on suspicion of committing crime as Britons, the first police data of its kind suggests.

The arrest rate for foreign nationals averaged 22.2 per 1,000 of the population compared with 10.3 per 1,000 for British citizens holding UK passports, according to a Telegraph analysis of figures from 26 of the 43 police forces in England and Wales and census data.

Although the figures are drawn from official sources, it is the first attempt to provide a comparison of arrest rates because the UK Government, unlike some US states and Denmark, does not publish an analysis of migrant crime data.

‘Institutional cover-up’

Senior MPs and public safety campaigners are urging ministers to rethink their approach amid claims that there has been an “institutional cover-up” on informing the public about migrant crime rates.

An attempt in the last parliament to provide the public with league tables of crime rates by nationality was thwarted by Rishi Sunak’s decision to call an early election.

A backbench amendment to the Sentencing Bill, backed by Tory MPs from the Left such as Sir Robert Buckland, the former justice secretary, as well as the right, would have required a government report to Parliament detailing the nationality, visa and asylum status of every offender convicted in English and Welsh courts in the previous year.

Supporters including Robert Jenrick, the Tory leadership contender, and Neil O’Brien, the former minister, argue such data would enable the Home Office to toughen up visa and deportation policies for nationalities linked to higher rates of crime in the UK.

“There are massive differences in how likely people from different countries are to get in trouble with the law when they come here.

“The home office has done everything they can to stop an honest debate about these issues,” said Mr O’Bien.

Rory Geoghegan, the former No 10 adviser and a former police officer and founder of the Public Safety Foundation, said: “If the Government and authorities are to ensure public safety and rebuild trust and confidence around the handling of immigration then we must see greater transparency.

“Given our long tradition of open justice, the British people should have a right to see both the sentencing remarks and the criminal and immigration histories of those convicted in our courts.

“There must also be much greater transparency in relation to foreign criminals, their eligibility for deportation and whether deportations actually occur.”

The Telegraph compared the number of arrests by non-UK nationals and UK nationals relative to their populations.

To do this, it compiled the non-UK national arrests from freedom of information requests to 26 police forces that replied to the Centre for Migration Control.

Across the 26 forces, there were 140,163 non-UK national arrests over three years for a population of 2.1 million people.

This equated to about 66.7 per 1,000 people – or on average 22.2 per 1,000 per year.

For the UK comparison, our research used census data for UK-born people with and without a passport and the foreign-born population with a passport.

The migrant arrests were subtracted from overall arrests in each police force for similar periods to give 806,672 arrests to a population of 26.2 million – or 10.3 per 1,000 on average.

There are caveats in that census data, from 2021, likely downplays the number of foreign nationals with record migration arrivals in the two subsequent years.

Migrants with higher crime rates, particularly those without British citizenship, tend to be younger.

One study found 64 per cent of 3,308 crimes were committed by 20 to 40 year-olds.

While half of foreign nationals are aged 20 to 40, some 23 per cent of British nationals are in this age bracket.

Foreign-born nationals are also more likely to be economically disadvantaged amongst some groups, while arrests do not imply serious crime or result in subsequent charges and convictions.

On Friday, The Telegraph provided the first prisoner crime map by ranking more than 130 nationalities on the basis of the number of inmates per 10,000 of the population in the UK from their countries.

Albanians topped the table followed by Kosovans, Vietnamese, Algerians, Jamaicans, Eritrean, Iraqis and Somalis.

A government spokesman said: “This Government is committed to delivering justice for victims and safer streets for our communities.

“Foreign nationals who commit crime should be in no doubt that the law will be enforced and, where appropriate, we will pursue their deportation.”