I mean, surely @nomas you must recognise that in the context of this debate it’s relevant that — based on the limited data the MOJ has deigned to release to the public so far — we can see that, as one example, if a woman in the UK happens to come across a man of Chinese ethnicity he is statistically less than 10 times less likely to rape her than a man of Pakistani ethnicity?
That is extremely relevant information, when we are considering which people we might like to come to live here and from which kinds of cultures. This is why the request to release the crime statistics based on nationality was made: it will be far more granular (avoiding the absurdities here that I pointed out in earlier posts, like men of Middle Eastern heritage being categorised with men of Japanese heritage, for example, which likely masks the much higher offending rates of the former and the much lower offending rates of the latter, given the offending rates in their respective cultures).
When cross sectioned with this data based on ethnicity, were we to be allowed access to the data about offending rates for different crimes by nationality (data collected at our expense, from our own institutions, that is meant to be publicly available to us per our laws and as is necessary for a democracy to continue to function and make evidence-based decisions) it would be very revealing of the true risk profile of those coming to live in the UK from various countries and types of culture, and how these risks persist across generations in some specific cultures and not others even when people are second or third generation British citizens because certain communities refuse to integrate and adopt our cultural values and norms.
I think it’s perfectly reasonable for us as a country to prioritise the safety of our women and children above the desire of men from other countries to come to live here if they demonstrably pose a significantly increased in risk to us and there is evidence that there is a very low chance of them respecting our culture or intergrating and accepting our social norms and values. Why should we? There are many other countries to choose from which might be a better fit for them.
Democracies rely on people having information with which to make informed decisions. Sometimes the data shows that the objective facts are not what we might have hoped to be the case, but that does not mean that the data and objective facts should be repressed.
Ironically, such an attitude which aims to repress knowledge, science, fact, rationality and open discussion is precisely the opposite approach to what has made western societies the better places on Earth to live in terms of affluence and safety, resulting in so many people having a preference to live in them if they were given the choice. If they wish to do so, we need to be able to assure ourselves that they are people who will contribute to and be part of our society and uphold the very things which created the environment in which they desire to live, rather than them degrade our environment to make it more like the societies they wish to leave and bring with them the very different values which makes those places awful places to live.
It is not at all unreasonable to stipulate that we will only accept those capable and willing of integrating into our society and accepting our values and we have a right to know what we are agreeing to, who we are accepting and the risk that this poses to us and our children before we agree to do so. Or, indeed, to refuse.
Nobody has a “right” to go and live wherever they want to and then disrupt that society. We have a right to the information to be able to make informed decisions and hold our politicians to account and people trying to repress release or rational discussion of the data is sinister and fundamentally undermines everything which actually makes this a safe country to live in, in the first place.