What we can't tell you · Not collected
How much crime is committed by people of each immigration status (asylum seeker, visa holder, irregular migrant)?
Not collected No authority records the information in the first place, so no request can produce it.
Why
Immigration status is not a field in police-recorded crime or in the court proceedings database. ONS FOI-2025-3227 (24 November 2025) and a further response of 30 January 2026 state that ONS holds no breakdown of crime by asylum-seeker or migrant status. The Home Office links immigration status only to foreign national offenders after sentence, published as removals and detention figures, not as offending rates.
What is known
- Foreign national offenders removed or leaving detention, by nationality and offence group (Home Office)
- Foreign national prisoners prison_population_foreign_nationals
What is not known
- Offences, arrests, prosecutions or convictions by immigration status at any geography
- Any denominator of the population by immigration status at local level
Who holds the data
- Police forces (Police National Computer)
- Home Office (immigration status)
- Ministry of Justice (courts and prisons)
Would a Freedom of Information request help?
Unlikely. The status is not recorded against offences, so no authority can produce the figure from held records.
Privacy and disclosure restrictions
Linking immigration status to individual offence records would be personal data processing that no published statistical series performs.
Official sources checked
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/asylumseekersaccusedofcrimes2023to2025
- https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/transparencyandgovernance/freedomofinformationfoi/availabilityofdatalinkingmigrationorasylumstatuswithrecordedcrime
Last reviewed 2026-09-02. Availability changes; if a publication now answers this question, challenge the classification below.