So today’s ‘One out of every five killers is an immigrant‘ looks a little out of place. That may be because it takes three weeks to get a reply from the police to an FOI request and the hack who wrote it was anticipating rather different immigration figures to be published when he made the request.

Whatever the reason for the story, it’s an example of a very common and very misleading tactic that the Mail (along with the Express) engages in when it wants to make us frightened of foreign criminals. You can see the same tactic used in ‘One in six rapes committed by foreign attackers, shock police figures reveal‘ from April this year (although that story was churned directly from the Daily Express) and ‘Foreigners carry out one in every five killings in Britain, police figures reveal‘ from April 2008. You’ll notice that the last article there reveals that the ‘one in five’ figure isn’t actually news, since it was reported over a year ago.

Here’s how the tactic works.

First, the paper contacts every police force in England & Wales and asks for stats showing how many of one crime or another has been committed by foreigners. Then the paper then calculates how this translates into percentages across the UK.

Here’s why the tactic is misleading.

1. Police forces don’t have completely reliable figures for how many foreigners commit crime. All they have is a box for ‘nationality’ on arrest forms, which are voluntary and never checked.

2. Not every police force responds, but the Metropolitan Police always does. The Metropolitan Police arrests more people – and more people who enter something other than British into the ‘nationality’ box on their arrest form than any other force. The current Mail article talks about there being 371 individuals accused of murder or manslaughter last year, with 233 of them being in the Metropolitan Police area. This will completely skew the numbers for the rest of the country, even if they’re proportionate for the London area.

3. The paper does not compare the number of arrests of people who enter something other than British into the ‘nationality’ box on their arrest from in the responses they get to the number of people born overseas in the areas they have replies from. Instead, they compare it with the whole country.

To illustrate this with an extreme hypothetical example – London has an immigrant population of around 30% and arrests more people for murder or manslaughter than any other police force. Let’s say that in one year, the number of homicides in London that people who enter a non-British nationality in their arrest form are completely proportionate to the number of people born overseas in the area – 30%. In that same year, there are no homicides anywhere else in England & Wales. We now have a scary ‘Foreigners commit a third of killings in the UK but only make up 10% of the poplulation’ story. The trouble is – that’s completely proportionate in the actual area those killings took place.

Now, the paper does state that “In London, almost 40 per cent of those in such cases in the past year were from overseas, or of unknown origin,” which would be disproportionate were it not for the fact that the paper has decided to add everyone who didn’t enter anything into the ‘nationality’ box. As the article later reveals, including these people makes the total in London higher than the actual total across the country, which is impossible. Could it be that the hack has included this figure rather than the actual figure because the real one would make it too obvious that this article is misleading?

This ‘get an FOI request from police forces’ tactic will always return a scary looking overall average. Great for frightening the readers with – not so great for actually giving an accurate idea of how many crimes were committed by people from overseas.

The initiative is called Saving Lives, Reducing Harm, Protecting the Public, and…

The most eye-catching proposal in the document is the one to force schools to introduce statutory lessons in ‘educating children and young people about healthy, nonviolent relationships’

This stuff is going to be taught to five year olds. But just like sex education being taught to youngsters this will be tailored to the appropriate age too. Five year olds won’t be taught the same stuff or in the same way as 14 year olds. That really would be daft.

The Mail doesn’t like it and tries to drag Harriet Harman in and imply a ‘feminist agenda’. Harman is involved but only because she happens to be borrowing the top job while the boss is away. Why the Mail had to raise a non-related point about her becoming embroiled in a row over rape laws is anybodies guess. Even if Harriet has had some input into it, so what? What’s wrong with trying to reduce the amount of women and girls being beaten shitless?

The Mail does admit that it is a cross government initiative, which contradicts the mystrious critics named only as ‘Others’ who say it is part of Harmans’ ‘feminist agenda’. But how can that be? This report contains more than just this part about wife-beating/domestic violence. Another thing that undermines the ‘feminist agenda’ is…

unless there are plans to segregate the classroom into ‘bad boys’ and ‘good girls’ whilst these lessons are taking place, then it’s obviously not just boys who are being taught about domestic violence, it’s all the kids.

Here, though is a critic that James Slack, the reporter, can name…

Margaret Morrissey, of family lobby group ParentsOutloud, said that PSHE classes were in danger of being ‘hijacked by pressure groups’.

She added: ‘I do not really want my youngster to be indoctrinated with these things.

‘There will always be those who want to cram our school curriculum with social issues that need to be taught by parents and society.’

At this point, I would like to quote from Enemies of Reason…

Do you like the irony? A pressure group is saying that classes were being hijacked by pressure groups? But surely this article has been ‘hijacked’ by a pressure group, then? Or is it only the wrong kind of pressure group that this pressure group objects to? So, sure, a ‘critic’ has said that the curriculum (not ‘already overstuffed’, mind) is being crammed with things, but just things they disapprove of. And who are ParentsOutLoud anyway? Well have a look at the website and see what you think. Now don’t be cruel about the fact that an education pressure group can’t spell or write things properly; that’s just nasty of you. We all make mistakes and doubtless there’ll be one from me just centimetres away from this. No, look instead at the kind of articles they have – roaring about ‘health and safety’, complaining about Government targets, attacking Ed Balls – it’s a bit like if the Daily Mail ran a pressure group, what that pressure group would be. So naturally their interests dovetail nicely with the Mail’s when a ‘critic’ needs to be found of any Government plan involving kids.

Around the middle of the article is where the Mail starts pushing against the feminist agenda even more, muddying the waters and discretely moves the goal posts…

The Government claims that violence against women is costing Britain an astonishing £40billion.

It has emerged they are carrying out five separate reviews into the causes and how women can be better protected.

This is despite evidence showing that boys and young men are more than twice as likely to fall victim to violence, and that young women are becoming increasingly aggressive.

There it is, boys are twice as likely to be victims of violence and girls are getting more violent too. That is the correct. I do not know the figures, but it is. The Mail is trying to destroy the feminist arguement by shouting that boys are a bigger victim than girls and Harriet is just looking after the girls. But just like any comparison, it needs to be like for like and this is not it. Boys and men are victims of domestic violence too, but not in the same numbers as women. It would be good if boys as victims were included in this report too, they may well be, but to try and beat Harman with the feminist stick by making incompatible comparisons between these two levels of victims is wrong.

A quarter of all violent assaults in England and Wales are carried out by women, and it is the most common reason for females to be arrested, recently overtaking theft and handling stolen goods.

So three quarters of all violent assaults are carried out by men.

Another quote that fits the Mails strange logic…

Jill Kirby, of the Centre for Policy Studies, said Miss Harman and the Government should not be creating the impression violent crime is men against women, when the statistics show this is not the case.

She added: ‘It is young men who are most likely to be the victims of violent crime. It is a distortion to suggest otherwise. It appears that everything must be viewed through the prism of 1960s feminism.’

It may be most likely to be a young man that will be a victim of violent crime, but it is also men that are most likely to be the person being violent. Whether against other men or women, women are still the fairer sex.

The Daily Mail on the other hand by miscomparing and it’s choice of people and organisations it quotes is giving the impression that the violence is the other way round, women against men.

*No, I’m not going to finish the joke as it is only funny to a five year old. Unless of course their mother really does have two black eyes.