Fact check: What are the most common crimes committed by migrants in the UK?

1. Why the published crime picture does not answer the question people ask

The ONS publishes the Crime Survey for England and Wales and police recorded crime figures, which detail types of crimes such as violence, theft, and fraud, but these sources do not include reliable information on offenders’ nationality or migration status. The ONS reiterates that its accredited datasets are not designed to produce statistics on migrants as offenders and therefore cannot be used to calculate the share of crime attributable to migrants. This routine limitation means statements claiming a clear ranking of crimes by migrant status are unsupported by the datasets the ONS releases ^{[2] [4]}. The ONS guidance explicitly points analysts to other departments for such breakdowns, underscoring that the publicly available crime picture is about offence categories, not the immigration status of offenders ^[1].

2. Where officials say to look instead — and the limits there

ONS correspondence and FAQs redirect researchers to the Ministry of Justice for data on offenders and sentencing, and to the Home Office for information on illegal migration. The MoJ holds offender-level administrative data related to court outcomes and sentencing, but that data is frequently restricted and not routinely published with immigration status attached. The ONS has refused or redirected Freedom of Information requests seeking breakdowns by race and immigration status, indicating that inter-departmental data gaps and legal protections around immigration records constrain public reporting. These redirections are documented in ONS responses pointing requesters toward the MoJ and Home Office, making clear that a single authoritative public source does not currently exist within ONS outputs ^{[1] [5]}.

3. What enforcement data actually show — the illegal working crackdown

Recent Home Office reporting shows focused enforcement activity against illegal working resulting in over 8,000 arrests, with enforcement concentrated in sectors such as takeaways, beauty salons, and car washes. That action provides direct evidence of a common enforcement issue (illegal working) rather than a comprehensive signal of overall crime patterns among migrants. Arrest figures reflect targeted immigration enforcement priorities and labour-market checks rather than a broad survey of criminality across migrant communities. Because these figures come from enforcement operations, they are influenced by policing and immigration resource allocation decisions and do not translate directly into population-level crime rates or comparative offence profiles ^[3].

4. FOI refusals and what they reveal about transparency trade-offs

Attempts to obtain finer-grained breakdowns — for example a 2024 FOI request for crime by race and immigration status — were denied or redirected, with ONS explaining that such data are not held in their public crime datasets. The refusals highlight a transparency trade-off: privacy, legal constraints, and departmental data silos limit the production of cross-cutting statistics linking immigration status to criminal justice outcomes. Those refusals also reveal institutional caution about releasing data that could be misinterpreted or used to stigmatize groups, which further complicates public debates asking for simple summaries of “migrant crime.” The ONS’s repeated guidance to consult the MoJ and Home Office shows systemic limits rather than evidentiary absence alone ^{[5] [1]}.

5. How to interpret the available evidence responsibly

Given the documented limits of ONS crime datasets and the targeted nature of enforcement statistics, the responsible conclusion is that no authoritative public dataset currently establishes which crimes are most commonly committed by migrants in the UK. The Crime Survey and police recorded crime provide solid national crime-type trends, while Home Office enforcement data illuminate immigration-specific operations like illegal working crackdowns. Researchers seeking clarity need linked administrative datasets across departments, careful methodological work to avoid selection bias from enforcement data, and safeguards to protect privacy and avoid misuse ^{[2] [4] [3]}.

6. Practical next steps for clearer public evidence and scrutiny

To create a defensible public answer requires coordinated cross-departmental data sharing and transparent methodologies: the MoJ could publish offender data linked (securely and anonymised) to immigration indicators, and the Home Office could contextualise enforcement statistics alongside comparable prevalence measures. Meanwhile, journalists, policymakers, and the public should treat enforcement tallies — such as the illegal working arrests — as evidence of targeted policy action, not definitive proof of broader criminal patterns. Until official, linked datasets are published, any claim about “most common crimes by migrants” will rest on incomplete evidence and risk misinterpretation ^{[1] [3]}.