In an article published last week, Conservative MP Neil O’Brien presented data for England and Wales showing that the proportion of convictions for which the ethnicity of the defendant was not recorded has been rising over time — from around 10% in 2011 to roughly 34% in 2024. He also noted that rises in the proportion of convictions where the age or sex of the defendant was not recorded have been much smaller. The rise in missing ethnicity “trashes the statistics as a whole”, according to O’Brien. But what explains this trend?
One hypothesis is that certain police forces and courts have become less likely to record all defendants’ ethnicities, for whatever reason. An alternative hypothesis is that they have become less likely to record the ethnicities of defendants from minority backgrounds — perhaps in order to conceal the scale of crime committed by these groups. The possibility that they have become less likely to record the ethnicities of white defendants seems somewhat remote.
If the alternative hypothesis is true, ethnic minorities should be overrepresented among defendants with missing ethnicity. However, two pieces of evidence suggest that ethnic distribution of defendants with missing ethnicity is similar to the ethnic distribution of those with known ethnicity.
The first is one that I have referenced previously. The Government publishes an ethnic breakdown of the prison population, and here the number with missing ethnicity is only 1%. If defendants from minority groups are less likely to have their ethnicity recorded, they should be comparatively overrepresented in the prison population. However, there is no evidence of this. The ethnic distribution in prison closely matches the ethnic distribution of prosecutions for indictable-only offences. As O’Brien noted in his article, the rise in missing ethnicity is present for prosecutions as well as convictions.
As for the second piece of evidence, the year with the lowest percentage of defendants with missing ethnicity in O’Brien’s data is 2011. If defendants from ethnic minorities are less likely to have their ethnicity recorded, they should be comparatively overrepresented in the 2011 figures, compared to more recent figures from 2022. Once again, however, there is no evidence of this.
Prosecutions data by ethnicity shows no significant change over time |
Defendants by ethnic background, 2011 vs. 2022 |
![]() |
To properly compare the two sets of figures, we need to adjust for the fact that the white population has become smaller while the non-white population has grown in the same period. Once we do so, there is a close match between the two. In the adjusted 2011 figures 23.2% of defendants were from minority backgrounds, compared to 23% in the more recent figures.
For the sake of simplicity, I adjusted for demographic change using figures for the overall population. Another caveat is that Chinese Britons were classified as “Other” in 2011 but are now classified as “Asian”. (They commit very little crime so this should barely affect the numbers for the two relevant categories.)
The rise in the proportion of defendants with missing ethnicity is certainly concerning, and O’Brien is right to draw attention to it. However, evidence suggests the ethnic distribution of those with missing ethnicity is similar to that of those with known ethnicity, in which case published figures on crime and ethnicity are largely unaffected.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeYou can bet your bottom dollar this is political
You can bet that a lot of offences do not get investigated where the perpetrators are ethnic minorities
An issue that is growing with all ethnicity data is many do not fit the categories. Furthermore the categories are largely artificial and involve defining someone by something that is often nonsensical. Race in itself is an artificial construct we would be better without.
It’s an intriguing one for anti-identity politics. It’s inconsistent to rage against it’s growth and then get grumpy if ethnic data doesn’t help one’s thesis. Similarly for many who seem all about identity politics – be careful what you wish for.
Great news JW.
First, replies are back !
Second, if race is nothing but an “artifical construct” (as you claim), surely that means that “racism” is too. Opportunity to save a lot of time and outrage here ?
A construct maybe ‘artificial’ but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist.
If there was no race labelling then you’d be correct. We’d judge by people’s character and not the colour of their skin. Now who said that?
A man whose example has been long since forgotten by the sad coterie of “anti-racist” activists who are betraying his legacy.
He also said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter”.
We should never be silent when the fake anti-racists are pushing racism and discrimination and demanding discrimination based on the colour of peoples’ skin.
By some for sure, but not all and important to differentiate. MLK would not have supported identity politics in the way it developed on it’s extremes.
Totally agree with that.
Quite so JW, and as immigrants become assimilated into society (no apologies for those who claim that this doesn’t happen, because it obviously does) then ‘mixed race’ in its various forms makes the delineation of people into strict races less and less possible, and relevant.
This is true TP. I’ve done the DNA stuff. Fascinating. Nordic and Briton mixing at some point. At the time I imagine it caused some consternation, but now it’s just part of our History.
They look and act so very differently. Mind you, David Reich comments that over 2000 years, Britain’s DNA has remained renarkably stable.
I think the lack of assimilation is one of the things that ails our delightfully multicultural society.
If what I’ve read and seen mentioned in parliament is true, some of us would rather marry our cousins.
Race will always be a feature of Britain in the future. Most people marry and have families within their own races, contrary to the world of TV advertising.
Thankfully there are some amongst us who are willing to break out of that. Hence the blurring of racial differences.
But that doesn’t mean we should pretend that race doesn’t exist. Or isn’t an adequate descriptor of an individual.
Worth a read:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/23/opinion/sunday/genetics-race.html
It could indeed be true that race, per se, is the wrong characteristic to use. How about religion instead? Not artificial surely?
Yes more in that, but we should delineate more within that too. Quite a difference in denominations.
Race is a spectrum
Not purely a construct, because certain groups have existed in isolation from one another for so many centuries and millenia.
But there are difficulties in definition in modern globalized environments if someone’s only fully ‘black’ ancestor is grampa or great-grampa, etc
No. Neanderthals were maybe a different race. Homo Sapiens are one race. Communities can and have developed separately of course, but that’s changed dramatically in the last 100 years and that trend won’t stop anymore than Homo Sapiens opted to just stay in the Rift valley.
Neanderthals interbred with Sapiens. And, given the ‘species problem’ (ie there are c.26 ways to differentiate species), Neanderthals could be seen as a distinct species. Indeed, the genetic diffence between (say) the hooded crow and the carrion crow (which are considered separate species) is smaller than the genetic difference between (say) a Lapp and a Bantu (which are considered to be one species).
Yes but Africans v Asians, for example, being separated for so many millenia, have clear genetic differences at scale.
Race is just the term used to describe these general differences at scale.
All the most successful long-distance runners come from a small section of sub-saharan Africa, for genetic reasons. Try training some east Asians up for those races..
150 years of globalization isn’t going to make much evolutionary difference compared to 1000s of years of group separation.
“One hypothesis is that certain police forces and courts have become less likely to record all defendants’ ethnicities, for whatever reason”
Perhaps I am mistaken but from reading a job advert posted by Westminster Council that reason appears to be that it is now deemed wrong to ‘racialise’ various groups into categories such as B.A.M.E etc.:
“The Council is committed to achieving diverse shortlists to support our desire to increase the number of staff from underrepresented groups in our workforce. We especially encourage applications from a Global Majority (GM), people who are Black, Asian, Brown, dual-heritage, indigenous to the global south, and or have been racialised as ‘ethnic minorities’ (formally known as B.A.M.E, Black, Asian and multiple ethnic) background and, while the role is open to all applicants, we will utilise the positive action provisions of the Equality Act 2010 to appoint a candidate from a global majority background where there is a choice between two candidates of equal merit. If you are from a Global Majority background you can self-declare this to the hiring manager as part of our positive action commitments.”
Trying to address the observed disparity in the UK workforce by increasing opportunities for people “from the global south” is madness. Has it occurred to the council that the UK is in the global north so you would expect a majority of candidates to be from that group.
I just posted a quote taken from an advert for a Westminster council job but it appears it has gone to moderation.
The point I was making is that it appears from a paragraph at the bottom of the ad, that categorising into racial groups is now frowned upon, now all that is necessary is to declare that you belong to the Global Majority (GM). The ad goes to some pains to explain that applicants from the GM who had previously been “racialised” into ethnic minority groups such as Black, Asian etc should self declare on their application for, in keeping with the council’s drive for positive action, they would utilise positive action provisions in assessing application and in the case of two candidates of equal merit the one from the GM will be selected.
What the heck is the Global Majority? Oh! of course! Straight humans of both biological sexes.
Think basically, it’s saying the selection is biased against white British, but what do I know. I don’t have a degree in racial or gender studies.
No, it’s saying that the distribution of unrecorded offender ethnicities appears to reflect that of recorded offender efficiencies. If this is correct, it would appear that minority ethnicities are _not_ being selectively under-recorded in crime data to play nice.
The proportion of cases with unrecorded offender ethnicity is increasing, but fudging of the recording of minority ethnicities doesn’t appear to be part of the problem.
Whenever you hear the term ‘global majority’, you can bet the person saying it is a black supremacist. It’s basically a way of saying they have white people.
The bizarre thing about referring to a ‘Global Majority’ is that all these people who are supposedly so antiracist have done is revived the old category of ‘Colored’ and renamed it ‘Global Majority’. So now there’s White, and non-White = Colored.
Which most people in societies in the West viewed as racist decades ago, of course, and which terms had disappeared from polite conversation, never mind print media, by the 1970s.
No doubt I’m a bigoted old gammon for pointing this out. And dreadfully racist to boot. Perhaps after all it’s as they claim, that it’s the ones that don’t realize they’re racist who are actually the worst.
Do these clowns realise that there are places like NZ and Australia which are part of the “global South”. Does that mean they must prefer an Australian over a black person from 2/3 of Africa? The more rules you make the more ridiculous the whole thing becomes. Just hire by merit and down with all this cr*p.
Anything and anyone not Wicked Whitey.
When describing a criminal it would seem obvious to mention height, hair colour, fat or thin… oh and skin colour!
We are talking about apprehending criminals.
The very idea of “I don’t see colour/race” is lovely intellectual exercise. And in some cases due to the DNA makeup of an individual it might be technically correct. But skin colour and outward appearance is a very handy marker for limiting the options on who to look for.
Yes, yes they are. And no, not all of them. Specifically, blacks and Muslims are massively overrepresented.
‘Are ethnic minorities overrepresented in missing crime data?” – shouldn’t we be asking ‘are SOME ethnic minorities ….’. It is unfair to judge all ethnic minorities as a block. It’s unfair to judge individuals in an ethnicity by the data on a whole from that ethnicity. But what the article is hinting at is probably right that some ethnicities are over represented, and we need to pivot away from such segments of immigration that cause this. And the fact that there are data gaps is appalling as there is data collected like this for all sorts of things, why is it ignored here? Of course j watson is right that our ethnicity buckets are increasingly obsolete. Where do you think an Iranian fits in or a sephardi jew or native Australian or Korean? In my london borough the largest increase in ethnicity data was the ‘other’ ethnicity bucket.