The British newspaper The Telegraph published an analysis of arrests of immigrants and British citizens in the United Kingdom. According to the report, immigrants living and working in the country are three times more likely to be arrested for sex crimes than British citizens.
Specifically, immigrants were arrested almost three times more often than Britons in the first ten months of 2024, with 23.9 arrests per 1,000 people, compared to 12 per 1,000 for Britons. In the “crime ranking”, Albanians are at the top as the nationality most likely to be arrested, followed by Afghans, Iraqis, Algerians and Somalis. In total, 48 nationalities had higher arrest rates per 1,000 people than Britons.
According to the Office for National Statistics, immigrants make up 9% of the country's population (5.5 million), while British citizens number 53.5 million. Although immigrants represent a small percentage of the population, they are responsible for 16.1% of total arrests, according to published figures.
The analysis shows that foreign nationals were 3.5 times more likely to be arrested for sex crimes, with 165 arrests per 100,000 people in the migrant population, compared with 48 arrests per 100,000 British citizens. In total, there were 131,000 arrests of foreign nationals over the same period, twice the rate of arrests of British nationals.
The release of the data has sparked debate about immigrant crime, with conservative lawmakers calling for legislation to require annual publication of data on the nationality, visa status and asylum status of convicted criminals. Supporters say the data transparency could lead to stricter deportation policies and visa restrictions for nationalities linked to higher crime rates.
Finally, the report states that the largest ethnic group in British prisons is Albanians, at 13%, followed by Poles, Romanians, Irish and Jamaicans.
