by Adam Wren, The Critic
Newsnight’s data on the ethnicity of criminals is obviously unreliable
This week, BBC’s Newsnight brought together grooming gang survivors and a detective chief constable, ostensibly to discuss survivors’ experiences — a rare chance for police to demonstrate they’d finally confronted uncomfortable truths and learned from past failures. Instead, it became another platform for attacking Robert Jenrick’s claim that grooming gangs are “predominantly Pakistani” — dismissed as “misleading” by the officer who seemed more interested in scoring political points than engaging with the issue at hand.
According to the graphic, 55 per cent of suspects identified themselves as “White British,” compared to 12.9 per cent identifying as Pakistani. Conclusive evidence, we are meant to believe, that Jenricks’ comments are misleading and incorrect.
Taking a closer look at their chart you will see the most important part of it is the disclaimer underneath that the ethnicity of suspects was only recorded for 31 per cent of the cases. Nearly seven out of ten suspects aren’t even represented in this supposedly definitive dataset. There’s no reason to think the missing 69 per cent are evenly spread out. Ethnicity recording could vary wildly, influenced by anything from language barriers to police hesitancy.
Given that the core controversy of the grooming gangs is the demonstrable, evidenced unwillingness of the police to properly investigate and prosecute these crimes, it’s difficult to believe that this 31 per cent of the perpetrators for whom data has been collected is accurate.