去年十一月，在布里斯托尔，三名男子和一名17岁的阿富汗少年对一名17岁的女孩实施了数小时的群体强奸。事前他们在Snapchat上对她进行诱骗，并灌酒；事后他们乘卡车逃往法国。法国当局将他们遣返回英国，随后他们被定罪，并于10月6日被判处长期监禁。庭审中，女孩描述说，“律师一次又一次地复述案件细节，使我不断重温所经历的一切”。
In Bristol last November three men and a 17-year-old boy, all Afghans, gang-raped a 17-year-old girl over several hours. Beforehand they had groomed her on Snapchat and plied her with alcohol; afterwards they fled to France in a lorry. The French authorities returned them to Britain, where they were convicted and, on October 6th, sentenced to long jail terms. In court the girl described how “listening to it all again from the lawyers kept me reliving everything that happened to me”.Such horrors fuel suspicion of migrants.
此类恐怖案件助长了对移民的怀疑情绪。近期，政府向寻求庇护者发放的《英国指南》小册子也产生了类似影响。小册子第五页明确说明法定同意年龄为16岁，强奸是严重犯罪。保守党领袖凯米·巴登诺奇（Kemi Badenoch）表示，“我从未听说有人因为收到一张宣传单而决定不强奸”。这场拙劣的宣传助长了部分移民——尤其是男性庇护申请者——在性犯罪中占比过高的观念。
So did a recent state-issued booklet about Britain for asylum-seekers. Page five clarified that the legal age of consent is 16 and that rape is a serious crime. “I’ve never heard of someone who decided not to rape because they received a leaflet,” said Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader. The clumsy campaign fed the idea that some immigrants—notably men seeking asylum—are responsible for a disproportionate share of sex offences.
影子司法大臣尼克·蒂莫西（Nick Timothy）声称，“阿富汗人犯性犯罪的可能性是英国人的二十倍以上”。这是真的吗？政府并未公布按移民身份划分的犯罪率。其有限的公开数据仅是全国警务数据库中按国籍统计的犯罪案件原始数量。所谓的“二十倍”说法基于英国约有13,000名阿富汗人，这一数字来源于国家统计局（ONS）的年度人口调查。
Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary, claims that “Afghans are over TWENTY times more likely to commit sex crimes than Brits.”Is that true? The government does not publish crime rates by immigration status. The limited data it does release are raw counts of offences by those of each nationality, from a country-wide police database. The “20 times” claim was based on there being 13,000 Afghans in Britain, an estimate from the Office for National Statistics’ Annual Population Survey.
然而，该估计并不可靠，因为它是从不足60人的样本外推得出的。2021年，因调查回收率骤降，ONS停止发布此人口估计。《经济学人》的分析表明，“二十倍”说法是极度夸张。但我们的数据也并不令人安心。牛津大学的移民观察站（Migration Observatory）通过信息自由法向司法部请求，获得了相关数字。
That figure is unreliable, however, having been extrapolated from a sample of fewer than 60 individuals. In 2021 the ONS stopped publishing this population estimate owing to plummeting survey-response rates. The Economist’s analysis suggests that the “20 times” claim is a wild exaggeration. But our numbers are hardly reassuring. The Migration Observatory, a think-tank based at Oxford University, obtained figures through freedom-of-information requests to the Ministry of Justice.
这些数据统计了2010年至2024年间英格兰和威尔士的警告和定罪记录，按犯罪者国籍分类。数据涵盖800万起犯罪，其中10.6万起为性犯罪，范围涵盖从强奸到公共场所自愿性行为。警方对犯罪者国籍的记录比较混乱，但我们发现五分之四的性犯罪由英国人实施。仅有0.39%——即15年期间的409起犯罪——是由自称阿富汗人的人实施的。
These count cautions and convictions in England and Wales, split by offenders’ nationality, between 2010 and 2024. The data detail 8m crimes, of which 106,000 are sex offences ranging from rape to consensual sex in public. The police’s recording of offenders’ nationality is messy, but we found that four-fifths of sex crimes were committed by British people. Just 0.39%—409 offences over the 15-year period—were committed by people who said they were Afghan.
409起犯罪是多还是少，取决于国内有多少阿富汗人。根据2021年3月最近一次人口普查，英格兰和威尔士有1.43万名持阿富汗护照者居住，另有7100名无护照但自称阿富汗人，总人口为2.14万。
Whether 409 crimes is a lot or a little depends on how many Afghans are in the country. In March 2021 the last census reported 14,300 Afghan passport-holders living in England and Wales, and another 7,100 without a passport who said they were Afghan: a total population of 21,400.
人口普查只是某一时间点的快照。自2021年以来，约有300万人定居英国，外国出生人口占总人口比例从16%上升至19%。2021年8月塔利班攻占喀布尔后，随后一年半内约有3.8万阿富汗人涌入英国。考虑到后来离开者和入籍者，我们估计到2022年底，英格兰和威尔士的阿富汗人口已翻倍至4.5万。
The census is just a snapshot in time. Since 2021 some 3m people have settled in Britain and the foreign-born population has risen from 16% to 19% of the total. After the Taliban seized Kabul, in August 2021, some 38,000 Afghans flocked to Britain over the following year and a half. Accounting for those who later left and those who became citizens, we estimate that the Afghan population of England and Wales had doubled to 45,000 by the end of 2022.
为超越快照范围，我们分析了2020-2022年三年期间的定罪数据，并对这三年的人口估计值取平均。随后我们对估计值进行标准化，以调整年龄和性别因素（例如男性实施98%的性犯罪，阿富汗人整体比总人口年轻约十岁）。这表明阿富汗人因性犯罪被定罪的比率是英国人的七倍——远低于蒂莫西先生声称的“20倍以上”，但仍令人不安（见图表）。我们的数字仍存在不确定性：可能受少数惯犯、此类犯罪报案和侦破率特点的影响而产生偏差。
To capture more than the snapshot we analysed convictions during a three-year period, 2020-22, and averaged our population estimate over those three years. We then standardised our estimate to account for age and sex (men commit 98% of sex crimes, for example, and Afghans are about ten years younger than the population at large). This suggested Afghans are convicted of sex crimes at seven times the British rate—a far cry from Mr Timothy’s “over 20 times”, but disturbing nevertheless (see chart). Our number is still uncertain: it may be skewed by a few serial offenders, by quirks in reporting and detection rates for such crimes.
其他国家采用不同方法得出的证据表明，这可能并非仅是英国的问题。这种认知当然也并非仅存在于英国。
Evidence from other countries, using different methods, suggests that this may not be solely a British problem. The perception is certainly not.
“最严重的犯罪，比如强奸、杀人……主要犯罪群体是叙利亚人和阿富汗人，”德国民粹主义政党“选择党”领袖爱丽丝·魏德尔对《经济学人》表示。在奥地利、丹麦、芬兰、德国和瑞典，来自中东、北非、中亚和非洲之角的移民在犯罪嫌疑人和罪犯中占比过高——尤其是性犯罪。在这些国家存在年龄标准化分析的情况下，这种过高占比会缩小，如同在英国一样，但不会消失。
“The main group, of the worst crimes, like raping, like killing people…the main category are Syrians and Afghans,” Alice Weidel, leader of Germany’s populist Alternative for Germany party, told The Economist. In Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany and Sweden immigrants from the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia and the Horn of Africa are over-represented among suspects and convicts—especially for sex crimes. Where age-standardised analysis exists for those countries, the over-representation shrinks, as in Britain, but it does not vanish.
按种族而非国籍查看定罪情况，结果更令人宽慰。司法部按年龄、性别和种族编制了详细的起诉和定罪数据。我们利用这些数据，针对同一2020-2022年窗口期重复了年龄标准化分析。结果显示，巴基斯坦裔、其他亚裔和其他非黑人少数族裔男性被判性犯罪的可能性，并不比白人英国男性高。
Looking at convictions by ethnicity, rather than nationality, is more reassuring. The Ministry of Justice produces detailed data on prosecutions and convictions by age, sex and ethnicity. We used these to repeat our age-standardised analysis, for the same 2020-22 window. Our results suggested that Pakistani, other Asian and other non-black minority men were no more likely to have been convicted of sex offences than white British men.
不同国籍之间的定罪率存在差异，这不应令人惊讶。移民观察站的本·布林德尔指出，许多移民曾目睹暴力，或来自贫困背景。这助长了犯罪，而在英国社会隔离且失业也无济于事。“正如英国公民内部存在巨大的定罪率差异，不同国籍之间也会存在这种差异，”他说。
It should not be surprising that conviction rates differ between nationalities. Ben Brindle of the Migration Observatory notes that many migrants will have witnessed violence, or come from poor backgrounds. This drives criminality, and being socially isolated and jobless in Britain doesn’t help. “Just as large differences in conviction rates exist among British citizens, they will be present across different nationalities, too,” he says.
还需正确看待这些数字。2010-2012年，阿富汗籍人士因性犯罪被判刑92起；2022-2024年总计为102起。在阿富汗裔人口大致增加两倍的情况下，仅增加10起性犯罪，并非流行病式爆发。
And the numbers need to be kept in perspective. In 2010-12 Afghan nationals were convicted of 92 sex crimes; in 2022-24 the total was 102. Ten additional sex crimes, after the Afghan population has roughly tripled, is not an epidemic.