FOI 16949-25 Crime Rates and Religion Nationality Correlations

Request to Northamptonshire Police

Specifically, I am seeking recorded data held by your force that may show whether there is any correlation between immigration trends and crime rates in your area. My aim is to understand this issue based solely on evidence, without interpretation or commentary.

To that end, Under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, I would like to request the following information:

1. For the past 10 years (2015–2025), please provide annual recorded crime statistics for your force area, broken down by:

• Type of crime (e.g., violent crime, property crime, sexual offences, drug offences, etc.).
• Offender nationality where recorded.
• Offender religion where recorded.
• If religion or nationality are not recorded – why?

2. If available, please provide any reports, statistical datasets, or analysis your force holds regarding:

• The number of arrests or convictions of individuals identified as being in the UK without legal immigration status (“illegal immigrants”).
• Trends in offender nationality or religion over the past 10 years.
• Any correlations or patterns your force has documented between immigration status, religion, and crime rates.

3. If exact data is not available, please provide any summary reports, briefings, or prepared documents held by the force on these topics.

Response

Question 1

Crime statistics recorded by Northamptonshire Police 2015 to 2025

Unfortunately, Northamptonshire Police is unable to provide accurate answers to the remainder of your request.

The UK General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) classifies religious or philosophical beliefs and racial or ethnic origin (which includes nationality) as "special categories of personal data". These categories of data can only be collected and processed if there is a clear, necessary, and legal reason such as the investigation of an alleged hate crime. For most criminal investigations, a person's religion or nationality is irrelevant to the elements of the crime itself.

Question 2

Having made enquiries with our intelligence analysts, we conclude that there have been no correlations or trends established in terms of offender immigration status, their religion/nationality and crime rates.

This is partially because, as mentioned in Question 1, these categories of data are not recorded mandatorily. Additionally, Northamptonshire Police have not embarked on an analysis which falls under the scope or timeframe of your request and therefore hold no briefings or documents matching your criteria. To do so would involve a manual review of all cases recorded in the table above, which would substantially exceed the appropriate cost limit of £450. Even if this were possible within the cost limit, we would not be able to guarantee the accuracy of the data disclosed due to the issues discussed above.

Accordingly, please accept this Refusal Notice under s12(1) of the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (The Act).

We always strive to provide the highest level of service that we can with the finite resources at our disposal. Our Duty to offer advice and assistance to help you revise your request as outlined in s16 of The Act cannot be fulfilled due to the incommensurate number of records to be manually reviewed.

Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that the data has been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large-scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting the data.

If you decide to write an article or use the enclosed data, we would ask you to take into consideration the factors highlighted in this document so as to not mislead members of the public or official bodies or misrepresent the relevance of the whole or any part of this disclosed material.