Emma Monk

Very good thread.

Emma Monk@monkemma.bsky.social

Pretending that they are the bogeymen does nothing to keep real women safe. The Economist article was far more nuanced than that graph suggested. But of course, that graph is all anyone will bother taking from it🙄

I will probably write this up on Substack in the next day or so. I was hoping for a break after the Daily Mail debunk! So please do sign up at monkdebunks.substack.com for free if you like this sort of thing! buymeacoffee.com/MonkDebunks - always helps!😊 25/

An additional 10 over a 3-year time span, after the population trebled. That doesn't really fir the narrative, does it? As the subheading says, this is hardly an epidemic...

As ever, all sexual crimes are a problem, and far more could and should be done to protect women. But MEN are the issue. Not Asian men, asylum-seeking men, Afghan men, Muslim men, foreign-born men or whatever other culture war angle is the hot topic of the day 23/

The usual suspects will be disappointed by this paragraph! When you break it down by ethnicity, Pakistani and other Asian men were no more likely to have been convicted of sex offences than White British men...🤷‍♀️

This final paragraph gives some interesting perspective. In 2010-2012, Afghan nationals were convicted of 92 sex crimes 12 years later, when the Afghan population in the UK had roughly tripled, including ~30K refugees: 2022-2024, Afghan nationals were convicted of 102 sex crimes

And add to that that we are looking at offences and not individuals And we are comparing rates between the group committing 80% of the offences and the group committing 0.39% of them. It is all very statistically problematic! 18/

The Economist's graph is also very odd in deciding to give Afghanistan its own line, but then grouping whole geographic regions all together, including South Asia, which includes Afghanistan... 19/

If you use 45,000 as your base population (as they did), you get your 7x value. If you use national identity + new arrivals, you get 5.7x If you use born in Afghanistan + new arrivals as your base population, you get 2.9x 16/

The fact is, there are so many variables and that makes comparisons very difficult Who self-declares as Afghan? And who self-declares as British? And who doesn't give a nationality? What population do you divide those by? Born somewhere, holds a passport, national identity? It's incredibly messy!

The issue we come back to is what counts as the base rate population. They used 21,400 from the Census and added 24,000 refugees following 2021 The 24,000 figure is fair when looking at the Migration Observatory data, but does the 21,400 seem correct?

They say that is those who held an Afghan passport (14,300) and a further 7,100 without a passport who said they were Afghan. But 31,000 gave Afghan as their national identity, and 85,700 were born in Afghanistan Because it makes a difference! 15/

Over those 15 years, 409 offences were committed by Afghans - 0.39% of them. We don't know how many people were involved - only the number of offences When you are comparing 84,800 offences committed by British people with 409, a few cases either way make a big difference 12/

Rather than trying to work out a "rate" over 15 years in a population that has changed significantly in that time, the Economist looked at offences committed between 2020 and 2022 for their comparison 13/

And then you add in the fact that, following the fall of Kabul in 2021, around 35,000 Afghans were resettled here. We don't know how many have left and how many remain. So, what value do you use as your baseline Afghan population? 10/

The second point to note is that we are talking about pretty small numbers. Between 2010 and 2014, there were 106,000 cautions and convictions for sex offences. (ranging from rape to consensual sex in public) 80% of these were committed by British people. 11/

According to the Census 2021 data: ⏺️ 14,275 held Afghan passports ⏺️ 31,132 gave Afghan as their national identity ⏺️ 20,649 gave Afghan as their ethnicity ⏺️ 95,518 gave "Asian, Asian British, Asian Welsh: Afghan" as their ethnicity ⏺️ 85,696 were born in Afghanistan 8/

So when someone says they're Afghan when they are arrested, what does that mean? Born in Afghanistan, holds an Afghan passport, or sees themselves as ethnically Afghan? It may well mean different things to different people. 9/

This Economist data does appear to have corrected for that issue by sex and age standardising the data. The big issue that comes next is: what population do you use? They explained that the 20x claim was based on there being 13,000 Afghans in Britain - known-flawed data. 6/

If you divide by a smaller number, you get a much bigger rate! So how big is the Afghan population in the UK? 7/

I've seen plenty of these charts, where they simply divide the raw number by the "population" (more on that shortly) to give a rate. And then they take the number of British nationals and divide that by the ENTIRE British population - babies, women, children, octogenarians and all... 4/

Which is ridiculous, as the overwhelming majority of sexual offences are committed by young men. And Afghan populations in the UK are heavily skewed toward young men. So you are not comparing a like-for-like population. 5/

It seems that the premise of the article is to look at whether certain nationalities are "responsible for a disproportionate share of sex offences" They begin by debunking the “Afghans are over twenty times more likely to commit sex crimes than Brits.” claim. 2/

DavidW@cityhobo61.bsky.social

The only data we know is accurate is the raw data on the number of Afghans cautioned or convicted for certain crimes. It is worth adding that this is based on self-reported nationality given to the police. What you do with that data next is where things get tricky... 3/

Emma Monk reposted

Pete the Pianist

@mr-keyboard.bsky.social

20h

Another rigorous debunking by @monkemma.bsky.social (Emma Monk). As always, balanced, thoughtful, and avoiding the sensationalism that the Mail on Sunday brings to the table. Pour yourself a coffee and prepare to be - ummm - not brainwashed ?

Emma Monk@monkemma.bsky.social

🧵 Wow - this article is bordering on unhinged! Apparently the BBC is akin to a “North Korean re-education camp” for teaching children about net-zero and covering both the pros AND cons of immigration Join me for a masterclass in cherry-picking and context stripping to brainwash your own readers👍🏻

Emma Monk reposted

@cityhobo61.bsky.social

21h

Emma Monk educating like Emma Monk does and doing the absolute opposite of what propaganda rags like the Mail on Sunday patently don't do as they prefer to stoke division & hatred.

Emma Monk@monkemma.bsky.social

Emma Monk reposted

Maria Gee

@maria-goretti.bsky.social

Another top de-bunking from the wonderful Emma . She does all the hard work for us. The least we can do is bookmark the thread & return to it time & again as a case study.

Emma Monk@monkemma.bsky.social