We do not, not really, know who lives in Scotland rather than the UK. But still:
Mr Kerr also compared the figures with passport data from the 2022 Scottish census, and warned that imprisonment rates for nationals from four countries were so high as to be “absurd.”
More than a quarter (26.3 per cent) of Eritreans living in Scotland are estimated to be in prison, he alleged, and more than one in five (21.9 per cent) Somalians.
Almost one in six Albanians (15.8 per cent) and Vietnamese (15.2 per cent) people living in Scotland are estimated to be imprisoned, according to his comparison of census and SPS data.
The analysis found no other foreign national group had an imprisonment rate of more than two per cent.
It’s not – because I think those numbers are going to be wrwong – the level that’s the point. It’s the difference by nationality in them….
And they are just the ones that have been caught.
Sweden knows all about Somali criminality.
And it’s not as if the criminality is just a matter of numbers either, Vietnamese criminality is likely to take a different form than the violent type typical of Somalis.
Number of heart surgeons from these countries? Yeah. And it’s not even like there’s a load of Albanian restaurants like the profusion of Nepalese ones in Wiltshire (I presume this is about former Gurkhas).
Albanian package holidays are being pushed now, so the idea they need asylum is just absolutely absurd.
If the numbers are wrong, then you cannot draw any conclusion. I have attempted to check them with no success.
The article says that Stephen Kerr obtained Scottish Prison Service data and compared with passport data from the 2022 census. A search of the http://www.gov.scot website turns up https://www.gov.scot/publications/foi-202400434815/ (Foreign nationals detained in Scottish prisons and detention centres: FOI release) which does not give any nationality information beyond “As at 02 October 2024, there were 629 foreign nationals detained in Scottish prisons (325 convicted and 304 untried).” The date referenced is “May 22 this year” and I cannot find any sufficiently recent data.
The inclusion of unconvicted prisoners (presumably all on remand) is deceitful and does not contribute to any understanding of the matter.
I then looked up the 2022 census available at https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk and found no category for Eritreans – only one for all of Africa and seven subdivisons. So I have no idea how he made his comparison. Maybe the mysterious table builder can be persuaded to reveal more.
Overall, however, either the data does not make sense or it cannot be used to draw conclusions about nationalities. The usual table quoted is the one at
https://www.migrationcentral.co.uk/p/over-100000-foreign-national-convictions which shos that Eritreans are less that 18% as likely to be convicted as Albanians, so if the data is correct, then it proves that nationality is a very poor predictor of criminality as there is no reason why the rate should be so different between Scotland and England&Wales. The alternative conclusion is that the data is just wrong for some reason.
I would also like to know why Stephen Kerr did not equally publicise the nationalities which are greatly underrepresented in the prison population. It seems to me that if we are to have a principle of racist discrimination against people from countries overrepresented in our prisons, we should equally have racist discrimination in favour of those from the underrepresented countries.
“SNP ministers have argued that Scotland needs higher immigration with a separate visa system to address work and skills shortages”
So the SNP are saying that their own people are thick as mince and idle?
I’d always thought that was just Glasgow.