‘No Link Between Colour And Crime’

Press, Volume CVIII, Issue 31785, 16 September 1968, Page 15

‘No Link Between Colour And Crime’

(N.Z.P.A. -Reuter —Copyright) LONDON, September 15. A British Government Minister said today a recent survey had shown that crime among the country’s coloured immigrants was below the national average.

Mr David Ennals, Home Office Minister with a special responsibility for immigration, refuted suggestions that violence was increasing in Britain because of the presence of coloured Immigrants. Britain has a population of about 50 million whites and one million coloured people, mainly West Indians, Africans, Indians and Pakistanis. Mr Ennals told a conference of the Union of Liberal and Progressive Synagogues: "It Is a view commonly held that there is some link between colour and crime. There is absolutely no evidence to substantiate this claim in Britain."

He cited a recent study in an area in the City of Birmingham, which has one of the largest coloured communities in the country. It showed that fewer than 5 per cent of all the arrests made in a sig-nigificantiy-coloured neighbourhood were of coloured people. “They comprised only 2 per cent of the offenders against property—by far the largest class of crime—4 per cent of arrests for drunkenness and similar disorders, and 18 per cent of those arrested for crimes of violence.”

Mr Ennals said that only a tiny proportion »f offenders placed under the supervision of probation officers or committed to reform schools during the last three years were coloured.

“Only in offences related to drug trafficking are coloured immigrants over-represented,” said Mr Ennals. He added that two-thirds of the crime accounted for in

the survey occurred in the inner zone of the city, where 32 per cent of the population, but 75 per cent of the coloured population, lived.