Protests and riots were sparked by the fatal stabbings of three young girls in Southport, after false speculation spread online that the perpetrator was a Muslim asylum seeker who had come to the UK in a small boat.
Many of the protestors and people online linked refugees and those seeking asylum to increases in crime in the UK, and stated they were demonstrating to protect women and girls from the threat of violence.
But is there a link between refugees and crime? Ferret Fact Service explains.
How is migration to the UK changing?
Net migration to the UK – that’s the difference between the number of people who leave and arrive – was unusually high in 2023, at 685,000 people.
This was primarily due to non-EU migrants coming to the UK on work visas, and international students.
This figure is expected to reduce when statistics are released for 2024, although projections are uncertain, and net migration estimates are often revised up or down.
According to the Oxford University Migration Observatory, over the last two years 1.4 million people have been added to the UK population through migration.
Are there more refugees coming to the UK?
In 2022, there were an estimated 387,000 people in the UK who said they came here to seek asylum. This number is 0.6 per cent of the total population, and four per cent of the foreign-born population.
The number of UK asylum applications peaked in 2002, when 84,132 were made. In 2023, there were 67,337 applications for asylum.
There remains a significant backlog of people who are awaiting asylum decisions. At the end of March 2024, there were 86,460 cases who had not received an initial decision.
How many people are crossing in small boats?
Since 2020, small boat crossings have made up the majority of “irregular” migration. This is when someone comes to the UK through a non-standard route rather than through official channels.
In the last year to March 2024, 38,546 people arrived in the UK through irregular routes, with 81 per cent entering via small boat crossings.
Are crime rates in the UK increasing or decreasing?
There has been a long term decrease in crime across the UK, after reaching a high in the 1990s.
Rates of non-sexual violent crime in Scotland peaked in 2006-07 at 180 per 10,000 population. In 2022-23, the most recent statistics available, the rate was 126. It has increased since 2014-15, aside from 2020-21 during Covid-19 restrictions.
According to the Office for National Statistics, there has been a “general downward trend” in violent crime in England and Wales since it peaked in 1995.
Recorded sexual crime rates in Scotland have increased to their highest level in 2022-23, with 27 recorded per 10,000 population. This increase has been partly attributed to increasing numbers of historical cases being brought to justice, as well as a significant rise in online sexual offending.
What does the research say about crime rates, refugees and migration in the UK?
There has been little recent research on the impact of refugees specifically on crime rates in the UK. The UK and Scottish governments do not publish statistics on recorded crimes by those who are seeking asylum or have settled refugee status.
There have been studies on the link between immigration and crime in the UK but there are difficulties in linking crime rates and refugees because other issues can correlate with levels of crime in an area, such as social deprivation, poor housing, and addiction. Without robust statistics, it can be hard to determine whether levels of crime increasing or decreasing in an area are actually caused by levels of migration or refugees, or because of existing factors.
The Oxford University Migration Observatory assessed the evidence in a 2013 report.
In England and Wales, property crime decreased between 2002 and 2011 as the foreign-born population increased, but studies could not find evidence these were linked.
A study in 2013 looked at two large groups of migrants who arrived in the UK between 2002 and 2009. It focused on those who came to the UK as asylum seekers fleeing conflicts in the former Yugoslavia, Iraq and Afghanistan, and people who entered the UK as migrants after the expansion of the European Union.
Researchers found the share of asylum seekers in an area could be related to a 1.1 per cent rise in property crime, while those from the EU expansion countries were associated with a 0.4 per cent fall in property crime.
Neither group were linked with significant changes in violent crime.
However a separate 2013 UK study found no evidence of causal link between immigration and criminal behaviour, and a report published in 2017 suggested there could be a link between falling crime rates and waves of immigration.
A 2018 analysis of migration from the European Economic Area for the UK Government found no evidence that migration had an effect on crime rates in England and Wales.
The Migration Observatory told Ferret Fact Service it was unaware of any recent data that shows a connection between migration and crime.
Ferret Fact Service (FFS) is a non-partisan fact checker, and signatory to the International Fact-Checking Network fact-checkers’ code of principles.
All the sources used in our checks are publicly available and the FFS fact-checking methodology can be viewed here.
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