The British public believes foreign nationals are responsible for twice the number of sexual offences than they actually commit, a study has suggested.
New research on public perception of crime found the public guessed foreign nationals make up twice the number of sexual offenders than official statistics show (30 per cent compared to 15 per cent). They also estimated foreign nationals make up 25 per cent of the prison population, when in reality they make up just 15 per cent.
Rates of mobile phone theft, domestic burglary, vehicle theft, and murder have all fallen, despite perceptions that all have risen, the study found. In fact, researchers at King’s College London found, the general public were wrong about crime on nearly every measure: from whether crime is rising or falling, to how many people fall victim, the ethnicity and nationality of offenders, and whether police numbers have increased or decreased.
Based on two surveys of 1,797 and 2,164 UK adults, the research suggested Reform UK supporters stand out as consistently the most wrong – particularly on the ethnicity of those convicted of serious offences and the share of prisoners and offenders who are foreign nationals.
Professor Bobby Duffy, director of the Policy Institute at King’s College London, said the research shows the public are “very wrong about crime”.
“They think the risk is higher than it is, that everything is getting worse when many aspects are improving, and that police numbers have fallen when they’ve actually risen,” he said.
Those who hold misperceptions about crime are more likely to feel there is “two-tier justice” in the UK, to be more sceptical of the government’s ability to deal with crime, and be more supportive of harsher, more punitive crime policies, the study also concluded.
It forms a part of a new research series called “Mistaken Britain”, which aims to show why such mistaken beliefs matter and how they can be tackled.
Prof Duffy believes there is “no single reason” for the misconceptions, and called it “an interaction between how we think and what we’re told”.
“We have a deep negativity bias that tunes us to threat, and a rosy view of the past that makes us assume things were safer in the past than they were,” he said. “When people respond with an inflated measure of crime, they aren’t just trying to estimate a reality – they’re sending a message about what worries them.
“And that’s compounded by what we’re told: ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ is a key news value for a reason, so the picture we’re fed points relentlessly to the frightening and the violent.”
He added that the misperceptions are most extreme in Reform UK voters, who are most wrong on where crime connects to other concerns such as immigration and diversity.
“For example, Reform supporters think ethnic minorities make up 70 per cent of those convicted of homicide, which is double the reality,” he said.
Dr Duffy added there are no “easy fixes” and that “simple myth-busting” won’t change perceptions on its own.
“This is rooted in our psychology and in real media, social media and political incentives to play to our concerns,” he explained. “Simplistic myth-busting won’t do it on its own, because it misdiagnoses a large part of the cause: these beliefs are as much about identity and emotion as information.
“But that’s not a reason to give up on the facts – it really matters for individual quality of life and the quality of debate in a country that these misperceptions are recognised, and we do a better job of communicating the reality.”
