Criminals’ ethnicity 'covered up' over 'fears of being called racist' as police and courts fail to record data

Government figures released under Freedom of Information laws showed that the number of offences where no information on the ethnicity of criminals was recorded has grown substantially in the last 15 years.

Ministry of Justice data showed that the proportion of criminals convicted of child sex offences where ethnicity was not recorded rose from 11.6 per cent in 2010 to 28.7 per cent in 2024.

For sexual offences overall it rose from 15 per cent to 29 per cent.

This is despite evidence that in the early 2000s, local authorities covered up grooming gang scandals, which often involved Pakistani men, for fears of being called racist.

Data was also shown to be omitted for other crimes of a non sexual nature.

Former minister Neil O’Brien who uncovered these gaps said these findings were especially alarming at a time when there is increased focus on criminal’s ethnicity due to the rape gang scandals.

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“You might have thought that following 2020 and the huge public discussion surrounding the death of George Floyd there would be improvements to statistics on criminal justice and ethnicity,” he told The Telegraph.

“But the reverse is true – we are becoming less and less likely to record the ethnicity of people convicted of crimes. More and more offences see the ethnicity of those convicted recorded as ‘unknown’.”

O’Brian claimed the only explanation for this was worry on the part of authorities about being branded racist, noting that other services have not refused to declare ethnicities.

Shadow justice secretary Robert Jenrick said the criminal justice system needed to be open and transparent to gain the public’s confidence.

He said: “The reduction in published data on the ethnicity of convicted criminals, in sharp contrast to data on age or sex, will only fuel perceptions that the British state is covering up the costs of migration.”

“We urgently need all the data so that, for the first time, we can see the actual impact of different types of migration.”

Jenrick called for the Government to present a report to Parliament every year with the nationality, visa and asylum status of every criminal convicted in England and Wales.

Although the public focus has been on sexual offences, the data shows that growing failure to collect data on ethnicity extends across all crimes.

For robbery in 2010, ethnic data on offenders was only absent in 14 percent, rising to 44 per cent in 2024.

For violence against a person, the absense increased from 11 per cent to 30 per cent.

Drug offences are one of the biggest increases, with failure to record ethnicity jumping from eight per cent in 2010 to 39 per cent in 2024.

For possession of weapons it jumped from eight per cent to 31 per cent.

Other crimes where the lack of recording rose substantially include shoplifting and driving under the influence of drugs and drink.

Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has ordered police to plug the gaps in the ethnicity data they collect on child sexual abuse, claiming it was “still inadequate”.

She told the police’s child sexual exploitation task force that it must gather data not only at the beginning of an investigation but also at the end.

Last week, the task force published data showing that Pakistanis were four times more likely to carry out child sex grooming offences. This was based on data from 30 per cent of grooming cases in 2023 and the first nine months of 2024.

On Friday, Richard Fewkes, the director of the child sexual exploitation taskforce said Cooper has rightly raised concerns, but claimed the gaps in data were not due to fears of being labelled racist.

He said: “What it isn’t is police officers making a conscious decision not to record ethnicity out of cultural sensitivity – it definitely is not that.”

Earlier this week, Cooper announced the Government would back five local inquiries into grooming gangs, the first of which will be in Oldham.