A quick 🧵 on the data and a couple of other points There is emerging data for 2024 - but so far they’ve only collated nine months of it, so it hasn’t been published. So the latest complete published data is for 2023, and as such is the first collection of its kind. - ThreadSky

jenwilliamsft.bsky.social • 72 days ago

A quick 🧵 on the data and a couple of other points

There is emerging data for 2024 - but so far they’ve only collated nine months of it, so it hasn’t been published. So the latest complete published data is for 2023, and as such is the first collection of its kind.

Reposted from Jennifer Williams

Wrote about gang grooming and child sexual exploitation now, what’s changed since the first scandals broke in the 2010s, and what we still don’t know

on.ft.com/4h9E4NI

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carolinederry.bsky.social•71 days ago

📌

gordoncph.bsky.social•72 days ago

Brilliant thread, JW! A bit of calm and reasoned analysis, thank you.

gordoncph.bsky.social•72 days ago

I bet the MEN are still kicking themselves at losing you to the FT.

jenwilliamsft.bsky.social•72 days ago

This stuff is quite hard to report on clearly, because of the distinctions between different types of crime.

Child sexual abuse by groups of offenders is a relatively small fraction of child abuse crimes overall.

Child sexual exploitation - or grooming gangs - is then about 17% of *that*.

jenwilliamsft.bsky.social•72 days ago

Then there is the ethnicity data, which is obviously a major subject of discussion. Not only is the first time this data has been published as a collection, but in itself it is incomplete. Police only have that information - self reported by suspects - for about 1/3 of individuals.

moonlighthanger.bsky.social•72 days ago

It's depressing that when it comes to these crimes the perpetrators are discussed more than the victims - there are real lessons about institutional bias and prejudice here, but in they mainly seem to be about how vulnerable children are treated, not about the 'culture' of the perpetrators.

jenwilliamsft.bsky.social•72 days ago

So, to digress for a moment. Any new national inquiry would not be able to magic up that data for gang crimes committed in say 2005. It could collect other information, of course, but there simply isn’t historic data to pick over.

jenwilliamsft.bsky.social•72 days ago

Lots of people have been arguing for many years that this should be recorded so that the facts can be established. Nazir Afzal, for example, was saying it over a decade ago.

jenwilliamsft.bsky.social•72 days ago

The reason we still have incomplete data depends on who you speak to. Police will say it’s partly because they rely on suspects telling them, while victims themselves don’t always know. More critical voices - including former cop Maggie Oliver in my piece above - point to squeamishness

creativeblock.bsky.social•72 days ago

If the early bias hadn’t been against Pakistani origin gangs there wouldn’t be the squeamishness since. Self fulfilling racism

jenwilliamsft.bsky.social•72 days ago

In terms of what we do know, 70% of grooming gang suspects (where ethnicity was recorded) were white in 2023. This is lower than the 83% recorded for group child abuse crimes overall. Other types of group crime include eg groups of children on other children; abuse in the home

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