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The long-awaited Home Office review on grooming gangs has been published: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/944206/Group-based_CSE_Paper.pdf
Much of the debate has been on the ethnicity of perpetrators, so it’s worth quoting from the report on this. 1/
Much of the debate has been on the ethnicity of perpetrators, so it’s worth quoting from the report on this. 1/
“A number of high-profile cases have mainly involved men of Pakistani ethnicity. Beyond specific high-profile cases, the academic literature highlights significant limitations to what can be said about links between ethnicity and this form of offending.” 2/
“Some studies suggest an over-representation of Black and Asian ethnicity offenders relative to the demographics of national populations. However, it is not possible to conclude that this is representative of all group-based CSE offending.” 3/
“This is due to issues such as data quality problems, the way the samples were selected in studies, and the potential for bias and inaccuracies in the way that ethnicity data is collected.” 4/
“Research on offender ethnicity is limited, and tends to rely on poor quality data. It is therefore difficult to draw conclusions about differences in ethnicity of offenders, but it is likely that no one community or culture is uniquely predisposed to offending.” 5/
“In light of the lack of reliable evidence from published data, Home Office Analysis and Insight undertook exploratory analysis of unpublished data from the Police National Computer (PNC)…” 6/
“…to determine whether a relationship between child sexual exploitation and ethnicity could be determined. This analysis demonstrated that the existing data would not answer the question of the relationship between ethnicity and child sexual exploitation.” 7/
“First, it was not possible to use ethnicity data because of the amount of cases in which it is missing. Second, CSE offences can be recorded under a number of different offence codes (including more general offence codes, such as sexual assault)…” 8/
“…and so it was not possible to isolate these offences in the data. Third, the co-offending flag is only applied in a minority of cases, so when combined with ethnicity data, numbers were too small for meaningful analysis.” 9/
“While there is therefore no evidence to suggest that efforts to identify and prevent group-based CSE offending should be limited to focusing on one particular community or culture…” 10/
“...this does not mean that cultural characteristics of offender groups are irrelevant or should be ignored by local agencies.” 11/
My original Observer article on this, and on the Quilliam report on this issue, for which I’ve been a target for constant racist abuse, stands up well in the light of this: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/11/84-per-cent-of-grooming-gangs-are-asians-we-dont-know-if-that-figure-is-right 12/
I ought to add that I haven’t received half as much abuse as people such as Ella Cockbain ( @DrEllaC) who has done much of the research on this issue. 13/
