A study published in early November by a doctoral candidate at the University of Oxford concludes Britons are more opposed to immigrants from ethnic groups with higher average arrest rates in the UK.
The paper, “Net Opposition To Immigrants Of Different Nationalities Correlates Strongly With Their Arrest Rates In The UK,” was published in the online journal Open Quantitative Sociology and Political Science. It was written by Oxford sociology doctoral candidate Noah Carl.
Carl looked at a recent YouGov poll of Britons’ attitudes of immigrants, which showed Britons believe criminal history to be the most important characteristic when deciding whether an immigrant should be allowed into the country. The most important being “criminal record (major/violent)” and the second “criminal record (minor/non-violent).”
That same YouGov survey also asked British adults which nations they would like to see immigration reduced from. The three highest were Turkey, Romania and Nigeria, and the immigrants Britons were least opposed to were from Australia, Ireland, and Canada.
Carl then went through government data on arrest rates and violent crime arrest rates. He found that there is strong and positive correlation between opposition to immigrants in the YouGov survey and foreign nationalities with a high arrest rate.
Screenshot from Carl’s paper
Carl concluded: “The present study has shown that, in the UK, net opposition to immigrants of different nationalities correlates strongly with the log of immigrant arrests rates and the log of their arrest rates for violent crime. This is particularly noteworthy given that Britons reportedly think that an immigrant’s criminal history should be one of the most important characteristics when considering whether he or she should be allowed into the country.”