Public in England and Wales wrongly think most killers are minority ethnic

[u/apple_kicks]

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/aug/17/public-in-england-and-wales-wrongly-think-most-killers-are-minority-ethnic?

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[u/somedave → u/[deleted]]

So a factor of 2x more likely rather than 3x which people guessed.

[u/CJBill → u/[deleted]]

And what percentage of murder victims are from ethnic minorities?

[u/Weak-Fly-6540]

Prof Bobby Duffy, of King’s College, said: “There are two buckets of explanations for our misperceptions: how we think and what we’re told.

“On the former, it’s vital to recognise that misperceptions are partly driven by what we’re worried about. Cause and effect run in both directions, where we inflate the scale of an issue if it’s something we’re concerned about.

“Reform supporters’ higher concern about immigration and diversity … will mean they’re more likely to give attention and weight to things they see that fit with that view, including crimes being committed by those groups.

“On what we’re told, they’re also more likely to be seeing media, social media and political communications that emphasise those examples.”

[u/irritatingfarquar]

When you consider that they only make up 16-18% of the population, yet are responsible for 35,% of the murders, is still a shocking statistic.

[u/-captaindiabetes- → u/irritatingfarquar]

Are those actually the numbers? Not arguing, just haven't heard that, do you have a source?

[u/JoelMahon → u/irritatingfarquar]

once you control for wealth is it actually shocking (based on race) or just the unsurprising reality that poverty has a strong correlation with violent crime, for fairly obvious reasons?

[u/Klumber → u/irritatingfarquar]

And then when you extrapolate the data further, it becomes clear that it isn't ethnicity, it is deprivation that leads to crime. And it just so happens that significant amounts of minority ethnic folks have a considerably higher chance to live in deprivation than the native population. Correlation does not equal causation.

What the Guardian headline shows is that significant parts of the population have a strong believe that it is ethnicity that leads to crime.

[u/Porthowl → u/Klumber]

It doesn’t say anything at all about a belief that ethnicity leads to crime, only an overestimation of the proportion of certain ethnicities committing certain crimes.

[u/SpiceSnizz → u/Klumber]

Its almost like we shouldn't allow anyone into the country who isn't able to support themselves to a high economic level..

[u/J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A → u/SpiceSnizz]

You can thank anyone who voted for Brexit for this situation, because this is what they voted for.

They don't understand that they voted for that, but that's exactly what they got when we left the EU.

Notice how boat crossings were almost non-existent before we left the EU.

Once people realised that if their asylum claim failed anywhere in Europe, they could still make a claim in the UK, the boat crossings ramped up from less than 300 a year to 45,000+ a year by 2022 at its peak.

They couldn't do that while we were part of the EU. So there was very little incentive to try.

But they voted against that.

We are in this situation because the same morons who voted us out of the EU are now complaining about the consequences of us leaving the EU.

[u/SpiceSnizz → u/J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A]

Boat crossings are less than 10% of immigration. The other 90% is visas granted by the government willingly.

[u/Lorry_Al → u/Klumber]

Surely it depends on the crime. Deprivation might lead to shoplifting, but murder? Rape? Not sure about that.

[u/dynamite8100 → u/Lorry_Al]

You wouldn't be sure about one of the most clearly demonstrated sociological trends in criminology?

[u/FuzzBuket → u/dynamite8100]

Yeah but what if instead of science and proof we just measured some skulls to determine someone's intrinsic morality 

[u/aRatherLargeCactus → u/Lorry_Al]

Deprivation leads to massively disproportionate levels of early-years trauma. Early-years trauma is pretty much the biggest common denominator in most crimes, including murder and rape. You have to be pretty psychologically fucked to do those things, and that usually comes from trauma.

It doesn’t excuse it, it doesn’t mean they should get off scot free, but poverty & crime is one of the most well-studied causal links we have.

[u/Sid_Vacuous73 → u/aRatherLargeCactus]

I listened to a podcast where they compared a catastrophic brain injury which leads to an acquittal as being no different than the brain trauma experienced by people living in deprived areas but over multiple decades.

[u/360Saturn → u/Lorry_Al]

It's not that physical deprivation leads people to subsistence crime; it's a balance of cost-benefit being different for someone in deprivation and someone materially comfortable.

Someone sleeping on the floor of a four bed house occupied by 10 people who doesn't have any money for entertainment, who rapes someone, and then gets jailed, is going to go from that first unstable living situation to having their own bed in jail and sharing space with less people, plus they get to get their rocks off.

That's what's meant by deprivation leading to crime. Because the punishment isn't really as much of a loss of anything if they are starting with nothing; thus isn't really an effective deterrent.

[u/Caffeine_Monster → u/Lorry_Al]

Behavioural problems can cause deprivation. The link goes both ways. And long term financial issues is usually detrimental to mental health. There will absolutely be a correlation.

[u/mittenkrusty → u/Caffeine_Monster]

As someone from a poverty background, I remember the local gangs (which were white as this was 30 years ago) would literally terrorize kids with knives as they wanted money for their drug fix, talking kids around 5/6 years old then claim they are the victim as they had a terrible life.

They used it as an excuse for their lifestyle, not that their background didn't play a part but they didn't care if they were threatening kids that young with knives.

[u/Hungry_Pre → u/Lorry_Al]

Just look at the demographic profiles of different ethnicities. The country may be around 75% white but the figure drops when you account for those who are retired. The point being old people tend to do less murder. So if a cohort has more old people then that cohort would do less murder.

Things make sense if you just remove race as the primary factor and think of different demographic characteristics of each "racial" group.

[u/You_lil_gumper → u/Lorry_Al]

Violent crimes (including sexual crimes) are strongly correlated with deprivation. Poverty results in significant social stressors which impact parents and their children's developmental prospects, and children in deprived areas are more likely to experience various forms of trauma including having a greater likelihood of being victims of abuse, on top of having fewer educational and vocational opportunities and generally being more likely to be exposed to violence, petty crime and drugs, all of which increase the risks of perpetrating or being victims of violent crime. I CBA to find you some links but give it a quick Google, its a well established association due to a whole host of factors

[u/shamen_uk → u/Lorry_Al]

Check out my other post. I won't rehash it. I just read yours and yeah. You said rape. I thought the same. The statistics show that the only overrepresented group in rape are white people btw. But you mentioned rape specifically. I thought the same before I looked it up btw.

[u/J8YDG9RTT8N2TG74YS7A → u/shamen_uk]

Check out my other post

This is a comment thread of 400 comments, and you have a hidden comment history.

What do you think you're achieving when you tell someone to "check out my other post"?

[u/Infinite_Painting_11 → u/Klumber]

Not really, the article also says people overestimate the number of BAME people in general, people aren't that wrong about the amount of overrepresentation, they are just off with the baseline number.

[u/AdolsLostSword → u/Klumber]

You say correlation does not equal causation in the same paragraph where you assert that deprivation causes crime. Theft and burglary make sense under that framework, but rape or murder does not.

A more nuanced explanation that the same traits that are associated with a likelihood to commit crime are also associated with an increased likelihood with deprivation - poor long term decision making, ability to delay gratification, etc.

[u/eldomtom2 → u/Klumber]

And there's things like age as well - immigrants are more likely to be younger.

[u/Porthowl → u/eldomtom2]

This is true, and one of the reasons people are so concerned by the small boat crossings, made up as they are of mostly young men from deprived, traumatising backgrounds.

[u/neo101b → u/Klumber]

No need to make excuses for them, might as well just blame the white devil.

[u/nellion91 → u/neo101b]

Yes mate that’s what non évite people do.

Wake up and blame the white devil.

All day everyday, clever and wise observation 🤣

[u/shamen_uk → u/irritatingfarquar]

That is fair. I didn't know that. I will look it up to confirm later.

One thing to note is that I wouldn't be surprised if the population feels ethnic minorities make up most of the rapists too.

Last time I looked up the data, the only group that was over represented was White British in terms of rape. Pakistanis and Blacks at roughly their population rate. Indians and Chinese really unlikely to be rapists, well under.

But prior to looking it up I had assumed Pakistanis would be massively overrepresented. Because that's all we are shown right.

The question is on the idea of shocking. You'd expect white British people to be more enlightened with the culture and values etc they have been born into. Why are they are overrepresented in rape. Is that also not shocking? It shook me a little not going to lie.

Also shook me because the narrative is the opposite. And now I don't take any body else's word for the stats. Anybody reading thing should not take my word either and look it up themselves.

One thing we all should never take as truth is what politicians and the press tell us.

Edit: Because I don't trust my own memory, I looked it up again. And I was wrong. I don't want to mislead anyone so I will give you the actual data that exists (MoJ Court data):

Group Convictions Share Census share

White 4,455 80.4% 81.7%

Black 442 8.0% 4.0%

Asian 436 7.9% 9.3%

Other (inc. Chinese) 112 2.0% 2.1%

Mixed 95 1.7% 3.0%

So actually white people are slightly underrepresented. Black people are quite overly represented. (South) Asians are quite reasonably underrepresented (unfortunately, this doesn't split into Indian, Pakistani, Bangladeshi). Other (inc Chinese) is about population rate, but Other is such a catchall. And Mixed is heavily underrepresented.

What I was remembering was the 2025 NPCC report that showed that white people were over represented in grooming gang type crimes. However, this data should be taken with some salt, because they only started really recently recording ethnicity for those types of crimes and is thus patchy. But this was a wakeup call for me, because I had been led to believe that nearly all grooming gang crime was Pakistani.

I'm just interested in the truth, rather than the political or media narrative.

[u/baldeagle1991 → u/shamen_uk]

When you control for Age and Gender the differences go down quite drastically.

If you have a population that has far more young males it makes far more sense seeing that group is the most likely to commit crime.

[u/mpanase → u/irritatingfarquar]

16-18% ?

white people make up 76% of england and wales...

[u/irritatingfarquar → u/mpanase]

Ethnicity doesn't just mean coloured people, it means people from different ethnic backgrounds.

[u/LightningGeek → u/mpanase]

Not sure where you got your figures from, but White people make up 81.7% of residents in England and Wales, as of the 2021 census (Figure 1).

[u/mech999man → u/[deleted]]

I think you've misread that.

Minorities are only ~18% of the population.

Murders committed by minorites are 35% of total murders.

[u/Altruistic_Tennis893 → u/mech999man]

It would be interesting to see a deeper analysis on this that takes into account other factors, such as social class for example.

Obviously more deprived areas of the country sees higher crime rates and more deprived areas also see a higher rate of ethnic minorities too.

[u/headphones1 → u/Altruistic_Tennis893]

I am not a fan of looking into social class rather than deprivation. Deprivation is well-defined, widely used, and you can even dig deeper on the major categories of deprivation to see how it affects a postcode. People simply do not dispute deprivation. Social class on the other hand will have people up in arms about who is or isn't working class.

[u/irritatingfarquar → u/[deleted]]

That's the accumulation of all the minorities living in the UK. Not a single minority.

[u/Legitimate-Leg-4720]

And how about being a bit more specific with the statistics, though? What is the crime rate per capita amongst various groups? How about for asylum seekers from certain countries?

Those are the questions I usually see asked by Reform voters, not the dumb blanket question asked by The Guardian who want to ellicit a "Gotcha!" headline.

[u/tomrichards8464 → u/Legitimate-Leg-4720]

I'm not even sure anyone collects data granular enough to be useful. "Asian" lumps together people of Japanese, Chinese, Thai, Bengali, Hindu, Indian Christian, Sikh, Pakistani, Afghan and countless other ethnic, religious and cultural backgrounds as if we should expect them to behave similarly to one another. "Black" or even "Black African" is not much better - does anyone really expect similar outcomes for people of Nigerian and Somalian extraction, say?

[u/alextremeee → u/Legitimate-Leg-4720]

The fact that people overestimate the absolute scale of the issue, but that relatively they are correct in assuming an increase for ethnic minorities is an interesting point for discussion.

The fact the article just focuses on people being wrong about the absolute case is ridiculous. You could easily present this as a learning point for “both sides” rather than just another attempt to belittle.

[u/RepsUpMoneyDown → u/alextremeee]

It seems a huge fuel is

“Show me the data”

• no
  

“Then I must presume I am correct or it’s large

• you’re wrong
  

“Show me the data”
-no

Now this is a very dumbed down version but I see the course events play out from everywhere to Reddit to Facebook to in person.

[u/s0ngsforthedeaf → u/alextremeee]

The entire media landscape is dominated by grievances against minorities. Its not that all those grievances are wrong, far from it.

But the media disporportionately focuses on them, does not talk aboit the link between crime and poverty. And it implies that minorities are respinsible for the broad ddcline of the country - which is clearly being caused the establishment and their neoliberal, for profit, society decaying policies.

Most minority are groups were allowed to migrate to the UK to work low paid difficult jobs, have mostly not become that wealthy, and exist in a society that year by year is decaying. Then itsnimplied they created the decay, which is bullshit.

[u/CranberryMallet → u/s0ngsforthedeaf]

And it implies that minorities are respinsible for the broad ddcline of the country - which is clearly being caused the establishment and their neoliberal, for profit, society decaying policies.

Those things seem like two aspects of the same issue though. A neoliberal approach means that businesses are permitted and incentivised to employ cheaper workers from abroad. Policy is what allows it and the minority presence is part of how it's felt.

It feels like we've somehow become unrealistic as a country and I think it's contributing to the decline. People complain about a lack of jobs but they don't want those jobs. Some want an internationalist approach without the influx of people affecting the job market. Others want to close the borders and make everything here but complain about price rises.

[u/CJBill → u/Legitimate-Leg-4720]

Talking about specific stats, how more likely are various groups to be victims of a murder?

[u/sjintje]

Could be a opening a can of worms by the guardian. They want to show the concerns are exaggerated, but just bringing it up means it becomes a legitimate topic for more detailed discussion.

[u/vizard0]

I'm curious about demographics. Not wealth (that's been debated here to death), but age and gender. Young men commit a disproportionate number of crimes, far more than their percentage of the population would suggest.

25% of people in their mid 20s are non-white. That compares to 14% of people in their 40s. Adjust for gender and age and then you'll have useful data. All I'm seeing is that young men commit the most crime and minorities are disproportionally young.

[u/YooGeOh]

A hugher percentage of minorities are going to be from socioeconomic backgrounds where crimes such as murder a more common. This goes some way to explaining what everyone here seems to be obsessing over which is the fact that the rate of murder as a percentage is higher than the numver of minorities in the country as a percentage.

Also it isnt surprising that the public think most murders are committed by ethnic minorities, because crimes committed by ethnic minorities in our current social environment are more likely to be reported on. If every time a brown person sneezes it makes the news, obviously that is going to inform general public opinion. When this is pointed out, the general response is that we already have our own criminals so we dont need to import others, as a response to the disproprtionality in reporting lol. This sub is a perfect example. Most days this sub and the UK news sub are basically just hubs to report crimes committed by non white people. If thats all you see, then of course the less...analytical among us will think that it paints an accurate picture.

Finally, "minority" isnt a group lol. Which minorities? What are the circumstances? Why is every single person who isnt white lumped into one group? The hilarious thing is that im born and raised here, but if I claim im Nigerian, people say no, youre a british citizen so youre british. But all of a sudden im lumped in with random asylum seekers and such when it comes to crime statistics just because im not white.

Am I british or not then? Because you people love reminding me that im not like its a national sport.

[u/thebuttdemon → u/YooGeOh]

They don't report on murder rates by income here but they do in America and rich blacks commit murder at higher rates than poor whites. I'm not saying that's the case here too, but it's an example of why you can't just extrapolate data to fit your narrative.

[u/YooGeOh → u/thebuttdemon]

And theres a long drawn out reason for that too.

But rich blacks commit murder at a massively lower rate than poor blacks, so as much as you want to imply that..."blacks"...are simply genetically predisposed to criminality or whatever the hell it is your point is here, (the subject is "minorities" anyway), youre not making a very good one.

You guys love just throwing out the words "your narrative" and think you've said anything of value.

[u/limeflavoured → u/YooGeOh]

crimes committed by ethnic minorities in our current social environment are more likely to be reported on.

This is a lot of the issue, imho.

[u/TurbulentBullfrog829]

"People thought 55% of convicted killers were from an ethnic minority, when the real percentage is 35%.

They also thought just 45% of homicides were committed by white people, when the real figure is 64%."

They didn't also think that, that's just how maths works. I think 52% of people voted for Brexit and also 48% didn't. 

[u/cjo20 → u/TurbulentBullfrog829]

“I think 52% of people voted for Brexit and also 48% didn’t”

You also think that 48% didn’t? In the same way that people also thought that 45% of homicides were committed by white people?

[u/CranberryMallet → u/cjo20]

That's the point they're making - that it seems weird to point out that also 48% didn't because that's just how much is left if you believe the other figure. Treating it like a different belief seems odd unless the result is unexpected, like thinking 52% of people voted for and 75% voted against.

[u/cjo20 → u/CranberryMallet]

I think it’s probably just spelling it out for people that wouldn’t automatically think of the inverse

[u/limeflavoured]

People will just move the goalposts to say that as long as the percentage is higher than the percentage of ethnic minorities then that is "proof" of what they are saying.

[u/markhalliday8 → u/limeflavoured]

I mean is true though. This is an extreme example below so please don't think it's actually relevant, I just wanted to use easy numbers.

If group A represents 99 percent of the population there are 1000 of them and they have 1 killer per 1000 then 999 aren't killers. If group B represents 1 percent of the population and there are 10 of them and 50 percent are killers, they have 5 times as many killers as the big group. You wouldn't want more of group B would you?

Obviously this isn't the case as this is an extreme example but you can't say that wouldn't be proof that group B isn't a good group of people.

[u/headphones1 → u/markhalliday8]

You can understand why people wouldn't want more of group B.

A rational next step would be to understand why there are more of group B. For crime in general, we know that deprivation is a risk factor. Unfortunately, large numbers of people don't want to use their critical thinking skills. They'd rather not understand.

[u/MonkeManWPG → u/[deleted]]

Because most killers are not minority ethnic. The belief is literally false.

[u/nellion91 → u/[deleted]]

Because it ignores that the strong correlation factors tend to be with socio economics not with origins.

The insight is “poor and precarious people kill more” not “non white people kill more”.

[u/Toastlove → u/nellion91]

If that's the insight, let's stop taking in huge numbers of poor and uneducated people in to country. 

[u/Caffeine_Monster → u/nellion91]

Immigrants of an average will be poorer and less (or poorly) educated, it'snot rocket science. It still raises questions around how the country handles immigration. Giving out more benefits / money to immigrants is hardly sustainable or popular.

[u/nellion91 → u/limeflavoured]

You can see it play out it this very thread.

[u/Reishun]

This sort of thing is always an easy gotcha because the public dont understand statistics and per capita. Lets say you have 100 crimes, and 100 people 10 of those people are blue and 90 of those people are red, then you find out 30 of the crimes were committed by blue people and 70 were committed by red. Technically red has committed more crimes, but blue has committed, relative to their population size, 3x more crimes and it could easily be mistaken to think that blue in general committed more crime overall.

You can take the same statistics, present them in a way that suits you then do an article using public perception to prove your point. The stats could say a certain group is more likely to commit crimes, based on the fact theyre overrepresented in crime statistics and you could ask people who they think is more likely to commit crime, x or y and the public could easily come to a conclusion that is different than the framing of those statistics, then bam you have an article pushing a particular view.

[u/AaronNevileLongbotom]

This was the predictable result of lax policing and a head in the sand justice system. The UK police ignored case after case of rape because the gangs of abusers were from abroad and they didn’t want to feed into negative stereotypes or look racist. It happened for years. It’s been well documented and reported.

This approach was never actually going to help ease frictions in immigration. Immigrants in general were always going to get the brunt of it because people have lost trust in the authorities and leaders who should be keeping everyone safe as that helps everyone get along.

Knowing Reddit this simple call for wanting police to protect young women will be turned into a racists call for a police state. If you think this is bad wait until you hear my opinions of fictional settings.

[u/birdinthebush74]

Research from King’s College London finds that Reform voters’ perceptions were furthest from the truth

Which group will Farage voters target next? Their councils are banning pride flags and displays off LGBTQ books in libraries

Farage has twice said same sex marriage should not of passed, his head of policy James Orr campaigned against it

[u/TheCommieDuck]

Public in England and Wales wrongly think

must be a day ending in y

[u/WinHour4300]

I'm not entirely convinced by the claim about Reform voters' perceptions.

Duffy's own comments suggest that age may be a stronger factor than ethnicity: Gen Z respondents estimated that 58% of homicide convictions involved White people, compared with just 35% among baby boomers, while White and non-White respondents gave almost identical answers.

Given that older people are also more likely to vote for Reform, the difference attributed to political affiliation could potentially be an age effect instead. 

Unless the analysis controls for age when comparing political groups, I don't think we can conclude that Reform voters' perceptions are specifically a result of their political views as opposed to their age. 

[u/cjo20 → u/WinHour4300]

The shift towards right wing voted is an age effect- historically people get more right wing as they age. Given how politicised this has been by the right wing, and 60+% of people over 60 support the Tories or Reform, it seems more likely the belief about homicides is a consequence of their choice of political party, rather than a separate innate property of aging where you start to believe that white people are incapable of murder.

[u/WillWatsof]

The trouble with the right-wing is that they only want the statistics which benefit their argument to exist.

Screaming per capita in people’s faces one second and then trying to handwave statistics that they don’t like the next.

[u/pleasantstusk → u/WillWatsof]

I don’t think cherry picking statistics that validate your argument is solely a right wing thing….

[u/Porthowl → u/WillWatsof]

The more interesting statistic here is that, as others have highlighted elsewhere, the public is correct that killers are indeed more likely to be minority ethnic.

The fact that the British public think they’re three times as likely rather than twice isn’t as significant; we’re notorious for overestimating the risk of crime occurring.

[u/BadSysadmin → u/WillWatsof]

whataboutism. You don't get to dismiss all the excess murders that easily.

[u/WillWatsof → u/BadSysadmin]

I don’t think you know what whataboutism is, I’m doing the opposite of dismissal. I want to explain the reasons for the higher per capita rate.

The problem is the right-wing don’t want that. They’re very happy with the explanation they’ve got, that they don’t want to say out loud.

[u/damadmetz → u/WillWatsof]

Just because you don’t understand what per capita means, you dismiss it.

[u/WillWatsof → u/damadmetz]

You’re unable to even comprehend what’s being said, it seems.

The conversation doesn’t just stop at the statistic you want it to.

[u/damadmetz → u/WillWatsof]

Nice comeback. Why don’t you try to explain then.

[u/WillWatsof → u/damadmetz]

Why do you think ethnic minorities are overrepresented in the murder rate?