>>2913491Fine, reactionary feminist, I’ll bite your bait.
Sure: there is evidence of overrepresentation of foreign nationals in some sexual-offence conviction categories. I’m not disputing that. What I’m disputing is the much broader conclusion you’re trying to smuggle out of that statistic.
The available data don’t establish that asylum seekers or recent migrants are responsible for the disparity, nor do they establish its causes. “Foreign national” isn’t synonymous with “asylum seeker”, “recent migrant”, or even “foreign-born”. And a conviction statistic obviously isn’t the same thing as a statistic for offences actually committed.
More importantly, you’re taking a conviction statistic for one legally defined offence category and rhetorically treating it as though it were a statistic about rape or sexual offending generally. Under the Sexual Offences Act 2003, sexual assault is a separate offence from rape and assault by penetration, and covers a range of non-consensual sexual touching. So when you say “sexual crimes” or imply “rape”, you’re already broadening what the underlying statistic actually measures.
Then there’s the denominator. Comparing “26% of convictions” with “10.9% of the population” isn’t a controlled offending-rate calculation. Sexual offending is heavily concentrated by age and sex, so you would at minimum want to compare appropriately age- and sex-adjusted populations rather than treating every person in Britain as equally exposed to the risk of committing this particular offence. You also need to distinguish nationality from birthplace.
And this is where your per-capita argument doesn’t actually do all the political work you’re trying to make it do.
Yes, if foreign nationals are 10.9% of the relevant population but 26% of convictions in this particular category, that potentially demonstrates overrepresentation. I’m not disputing that. But overrepresentation and absolute contribution are different things.
Your own source says that 72.6% of the known convictions in this category involved people whose nationality was recorded as UK, England, Scotland or Wales. Obviously that doesn’t prove British nationals have a higher per-capita offending rate; they’re a much larger population. But it does demonstrate why “26% foreign nationals” cannot simply be turned into “foreigners are responsible for Britain’s sexual-violence problem.”
The same basic point applies to the broader demographic picture. The 2021 Census found that roughly 77% of the population fell into the White British, White Irish, or Gypsy/Irish Traveller categories, although obviously ethnicity and nationality are not interchangeable variables. The point isn’t that this proves anything about offending rates. It’s that a minority group’s disproportionate representation in a particular dataset doesn’t automatically make that group the principal source of the underlying social problem.
You can have a population that has a substantially higher per-capita offending rate while the much larger population still accounts for the majority of offences. Those propositions aren’t contradictory.
And that’s why “per capita” isn’t a magic trump card. Per-capita rates are useful statistics and genuine disparities are worth investigating. But a per-capita disparity does not, by itself, establish the cause of the disparity, the absolute contribution to total offending, the appropriate policy response, or the efficacy of an immigration restriction.
Most importantly, none of this means the disparity isn’t real. It means that the statistic establishes a much narrower proposition than the one you’re trying to derive from it:
foreign nationals appear to be overrepresented in this particular conviction dataset.
It does not establish:
foreign nationals committed 26% of sexual assaults; asylum seekers are responsible for the disparity; recent immigration caused it; particular ethnic or religious groups are inherently sexually dangerous; or therefore a particular immigration policy is justified.
Those are additional claims requiring additional evidence.
And there’s an even more basic point about the victim. The per-capita rate is an epidemiological statistic, not a description of an individual’s experience. If a victim is sexually assaulted by a white British man, telling them that some other demographic has a higher per-capita conviction rate obviously doesn’t make their experience less real or less serious. The relevant policy question is what actually reduces victimisation—not which demographic can most effectively be constructed as a political threat.
If someone wants to argue that immigration restriction would reduce sexual offending, they need to establish the causal chain:
immigration → additional offending → measurable increase in victimisation → restricting immigration → measurable reduction in victimisation.
A disparity in conviction shares doesn’t establish that chain.
This is the part I object to politically. The far right takes a real but narrowly defined disparity, strips away the legal and statistical qualifications, turns “foreign nationals” into “migrants/asylum seekers/BAME men”, and then presents the resulting threat narrative as though the entire causal and policy argument were contained in the original statistic.
It isn’t.
The disparity may be real. The story you’re telling about what it means is not contained in the statistic.
If you want to argue for a particular immigration policy, then argue for it. But don’t pretend that “26% of convictions in one statutory category” is itself the argument. It isn’t.