In Bristol last November three men and a 17-year-old boy, all Afghans, gang-raped(轮奸) a 17-year-old girl over several hours. Beforehand they had groomed(诱骗（儿童/青少年）) her on Snapchat and plied her with alcohol(灌她喝酒); afterwards they fled to France in a lorry(卡车). 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”.(在法庭上，女孩描述道：“听律师们再次讲述这一切，让我不断重温发生在我身上的一切。”)
去年11月，在布里斯托尔，三名男子和一名17岁男孩（均为阿富汗人）轮奸了一名17岁女孩，持续数小时。事前，他们在Snapchat上诱骗她并灌她喝酒；事后，他们乘卡车逃往法国。法国当局将他们遣返英国，他们在英国被定罪，并于10月6日被判处长期监禁。在法庭上，女孩描述道：“听律师们再次讲述这一切，让我不断重温发生在我身上的一切。”
Such horrors fuel(加剧，助长) suspicion of migrants. So did a recent state-issued booklet about Britain for asylum-seekers(寻求庇护者). Page five clarified that the legal age of consent(法定同意年龄) 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(英国保守党领袖), the Tory leader. The clumsy(笨拙的) campaign fed the idea that some immigrants—notably men seeking asylum—are responsible for a disproportionate(不成比例的) share of sex offences. Nick Timothy, the shadow justice secretary(影子司法大臣), claims that “Afghans are over TWENTY times more likely to commit sex crimes than Brits.”
这样的恐怖事件加剧了人们对移民的怀疑。最近政府为寻求庇护者发行的一本关于英国的小册子也是如此。第五页阐明法定同意年龄为16岁，强奸是严重犯罪。保守党领袖凯米·巴德诺赫说：“我从未听说过有人因为收到传单就决定不强奸。”这场笨拙的运动助长了一种观念，即某些移民——尤其是寻求庇护的男性——对性犯罪负有不成比例的责任。影子司法大臣尼克·蒂莫西声称：“阿富汗人犯性犯罪的可能性是英国人的20倍以上。”
Is that true? The government does not publish crime rates by immigration status. The limited data it does release are raw counts(原始计数) of offences by those of each nationality, from a countrywide 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. That figure is unreliable, however, having been extrapolated from a sample of fewer than 60 individuals.(然而，这个数字并不可靠，因为它是从不到60人的样本外推出来的。) In 2021 the ONS stopped publishing this population estimate owing to plummeting(骤降的) survey-response rates.
这是真的吗？政府并不按移民身份公布犯罪率。它确实发布的有限数据是来自全国警察数据库的按国籍划分的犯罪原始计数。“20倍”的说法基于英国有1.3万阿富汗人，这是国家统计局年度人口调查的估计。然而，这个数字并不可靠，因为它是从不到60人的样本外推出来的。2021年，由于调查回复率骤降，国家统计局停止发布这一人口估计。
