It would be silly to suggest that this is not an incredibly thorny issue.
By Colette Russell, Pupil Barrister, The Chambers of Mark Love
In October 2025, 4 women resigned from the Panel of the Grooming Gangs Inquiry, because they felt the Inquiry was not doing enough to address what they felt were obvious racialised issues and instead were shifting the focus of the Inquiry to more general issues.
Since then, and indeed before, there have been substantial media coverage of crimes committed by Asylum Seekers and refugees, particularly focussing on those from Muslim majority countries who have committed sex crimes. Press routinely appear at sentencing hearings and trials for defendants with obviously Muslim names who are not British citizens. In this year, there have been substantial press coverage of three, two Afghan men and one from Iran.
It’s a problem that’s almost impossible to address without a level of bias, impossible to deal with without making it an issue of race or instead using slightly wishy-washy phrases like “cultural difference”.
One issue which has not been addressed is that of the vulnerability of Asylum Seekers.
Who are Asylum Seekers?
People who seek asylum in the United Kingdom have frequently risked their own lives in order to make their asylum claim here, often travelling to the UK in a small boat or in the back of a poorly ventilated van. At least 84 people died attempting to cross the Channel in 2024, on 3 May two women drowned when their boat ran aground in France.[1] If their asylum claim is refused, Asylum Seekers are at risk of being pursued for illegally entering the country. You must have already entered the country where you wish to seek asylum to make a claim, so Asylum Seekers have no choice but to enter the country (generally without a legal right to do so) before they make their claim.
Asylum Seekers are given funds and accommodation by the government because they do not generally have the right to work and are not entitled to claim benefits. Currently, large numbers of Asylum Seekers, including children and families, are being housed in hotels rather than housing accommodation. In these hotels they are unable to cook for themselves and have limited space. These hotels have no outdoor space, they may not even have windows. Pressure groups have organised protests outside these hotels, accompanied by placards, loudspeakers, and sound systems, opposing Asylum Seekers living in their local community. There are also sometimes counter-protests, which support the presence of Asylum Seekers.
It can be safely said that Asylum Seekers, broadly speaking, are vulnerable individuals in our society.
Frequent flyers in the Criminal Justice System
The criminal justice system is predominately encountered by individuals with considerable vulnerabilities. One of the first things I noticed during my first-six pupillage was that nowhere but criminal courtrooms would one encounter a comparable proportion of people with complex mental health issues or active (often unmedicated) mental illness, people experiencing homelessness, people who do not speak English as a first language, people who suffer from addiction to drugs or alcohol.
Using the prison population as a sample of individuals who have had interactions with the justice system, there are a number of statistics that support my perception. According to a 2024 study in the Lancet, 39% of the prison population have uncontrolled issues with drug use, and 24% have uncontrolled issues with alcohol.[2] 3.6% of the male prison population and 3.9% of the female prison population are diagnosed with a psychotic illness, compared to less than 1 in 100 in the general population (according to a recent NHS England report).[3] 11% of prisoners are diagnosed with depression, relative to 8% in the general population; prisoners are diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder at twice the rate of the general population.[4]
I do not intend to suggest that correlation cannot equal cause. It is possible that people who have active mental illness commit offences more frequently than the general public because they are unwell. It is accurate that certain mental illnesses can be linked to higher rates of offending; people who have experienced trauma may have normalised violence, and be more likely to commit violent offences and be diagnosed with Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Similarly, people diagnosed with Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder may be more likely to offend because of the impulsivity inherent in the diagnosis. People experiencing street homelessness are more likely to be drug users, drug users are more likely to commit offences because of their illegal drug use relative to non-drug users. People who use substances frequently may also offend whilst intoxicated or high, because their inhibitions are lowered and they have less self-control. People who have active mental health issues and are street homeless may also be more frequently criminalised by police. There is a world in which all of these possibilities are true, and these groups of people live in a constant feedback loop in the criminal justice system.
Are Asylum Seekers more frequently involved in the criminal justice system relative to other portions of society?
There are simply no statistics to back up this claim. There is no register which records the portion of people arrested and charged relative to their immigration status or nationality. Statistics on prison populations record that Albanians outnumber any other foreign nationality in British prisons by a large margin, followed by Polish, Romanian, Irish and Lithuanian nationals. It can be assumed that individuals by these countries are unlikely to be in the UK seeking asylum and more likely to be economic migrants, these countries are also all predominately white and Christian.[5] The vast majority of the prison population (87%) are of course, British nationals. Prison population statistics do not record immigration status or pending asylum claims.
Conclusion
It is impossible to prove whether Asylum Seekers are over-represented in the criminal justice system, when charged with sexual crimes or otherwise. If they are, it would tally with the already-present pattern of vulnerable adults who are over-represented in the justice system.
https://committees.parliament.uk/publications/7455/documents/78054/default/
https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2468-2667%2824%2900023-9
https://www.prisonadvice.org.uk/media/exjhcwhz/mental-health-in-prisons-crisis-and-opportunity.pdf
Colette Russell, Pupil Barrister, The Chambers of Mark Love
[1] https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cvgz6q7p7n7o, accessed 5.5.26
[2] https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S2468-2667%2824%2900023-9
[3] Ibid, https://digital.nhs.uk/data-and-information/publications/statistical/adult-psychiatric-morbidity-survey/survey-of-mental-health-and-wellbeing-england-2023-24/psychotic-disorder
[4] Oxford Department of Psychiatry, “People in prison have higher rates of mental illness, infectious diseases and poor physical health – new study” 28 March 2024; https://www.psych.ox.ac.uk/news/people-in-prison-have-higher-rates-of-mental-illness-infectious-diseases-and-poor-physical-health-2013-new-study
[5] Commons Library Research Briefing, 6 February 2026, https://researchbriefings.files.parliament.uk/documents/SN04334/SN04334.pdf