The Office for National Statistics (ONS) and the Home Office collect extensive crime data for England and Wales, but neither agency records offences by the suspect's nationality or immigration status. This gap makes it statistically impossible to establish — from official government figures — whether migrants commit crime at higher or lower rates than the general population.
This absence of data is directly relevant to claims that migration is a primary driver of crime in cities like London. Without a migrant-status breakdown in official records, any such causal claim is unmeasurable from government statistics. The strongest available evidence instead points to income deprivation and cost-of-living pressures as the primary correlates of crime, according to peer-reviewed research on England and Wales.
Far from a backdrop of rising crime, London's homicide figures actually fell to their lowest level since 2014 — and the per-capita homicide rate hit a record low — as confirmed by the Greater London Authority and the Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime (MOPAC) in early 2025. Advocacy organisations that cite foreign-national charge data to imply a migration–crime link are drawing on partial, cherry-picked figures rather than comprehensive official statistics.