We Must Address the Socio-Cultural Contributors to Crime
We’re still more worried about optics than outcomes.
This week, the Labour government announced it will be publishing an official league table of the nationalities of migrants with the highest rates of crime.
This is a welcome move. Like many others, I’m increasingly frustrated by our inability to have solution-oriented conversations about heinous crimes—particularly when it comes to causes. Didn’t New Labour’s Tony Blair once promise to be "tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"? Yet when it comes to crimes disproportionately committed by specific groups, the conversation suddenly becomes evasive, politicised, or simply taboo.
This is most glaringly evident in the rape gang scandals, but it also applies to discussions about knife crime. In both cases, certain socio-cultural realities are persistently ignored or downplayed, usually in the name of political sensitivity or fear of giving ammunition to racists.
The Labour Party has, for example, resisted calls for a full national inquiry into the industrial-scale sexual exploitation of predominantly white working-class girls by predominantly Pakistani Muslim grooming gangs. Many suspect the reluctance is political: concern about offending Muslim voters in marginal seats, or fear that further scrutiny would expose the party’s own negligence, given that many of these scandals occurred in Labour-run areas. There’s precedent for this kind of disturbing political cowardice—Labour figures such as Ann Cryer, Sarah Champion, and Amina Lone (herself a Muslim woman) have been marginalised, disciplined, or sacked for speaking out.
The evil of these crimes is difficult to comprehend. But we cannot afford to look away. I recommend Conservative MP Katie Lam’s powerful speech in the House of Commons as an entry point for anyone still unfamiliar with the scale and horror of the issue.
Still, this article isn’t only about grooming gangs. It’s about a broader unwillingness, across both the left and the right, to engage seriously with the sociocultural drivers of crime.
The left is understandably wary. Cultural explanations can sometimes mask biological essentialism or reinforce discredited tropes. Many of the left also fear that these discussions demonise groups while ignoring underlying structural inequalities like poverty, poor housing, or underfunded education that are linked to crime. There’s also some truth to the claim that conservatives rarely examine sociocultural drivers in crimes where white individuals are overrepresented. When Netflix released Adolescence, many on the right seemed more outraged that the teenage protagonist was white than by the film’s commentary on violence and vulnerability.
If we genuinely care about victims, then we have to be willing to ask difficult questions. Kishwer Falkner, Chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, wrote in The Times that there is a Pakistani problem when it comes to grooming gangs. Social researcher Dr Rakib Ehsan has written about the Muslim voices who have acknowledged the problem and spoken up, only to be ignored by an establishment too afraid to listen.
Many of those involved in grooming gangs work in the night-time economy: takeaways, taxis, convenience shops. These jobs give them unsupervised access to vulnerable young women—often intoxicated and alone. Cultural factors also play a role: some communities hold deeply misogynistic views, particularly toward non-Muslim women. These are often tightly knit, highly insular communities, where honour and shame dynamics discourage reporting abuse. Sexual repression, coupled with exposure to Britain’s hypersexualised mainstream culture, creates a volatile mix. Meanwhile, complex clan structures (such as baradari networks) and fears of being seen as racist or Islamophobic are often manipulated to silence victims and authorities alike. The class and gender of the victims—often troubled, poor, or in care—only makes it easier for predators to act with impunity and for authorities to look away.
We see a similar phenomenon in another area many fear to touch: knife crime, particularly among young black British men. The statistics are not ambiguous. Young Black men are both more likely to be victims and perpetrators of knife crime and murder. Yet whenever the role of family breakdown is raised—63% of Black Caribbean households are single-parent families compared to 19% among white British households—all manner of bad-faith accusations are levelled.
There is also a culture that glamorises urban gang violence. Promiscuity, aggression, and status-chasing are often celebrated, with few systems in place to regulate male behaviour. The cult of being "cool" has created a subculture where antisocial traits are valorised. The case of Chris Kaba is instructive—a man with a history of violent offending who was shot by police while trying to ram officers with his car. Despite this, many so-called community leaders tried to elevate him to martyrdom. Meanwhile, legitimate tools like stop and search are routinely denounced as racist, despite strong evidence of their effectiveness. Young people are being killed weekly, but we’re still more worried about optics than outcomes.
Of course, all communities experience violence. But not all violence has the same causes. Culture—shaped by family structures, social norms, religion, music, community attitudes, and peer influence—matters. To pretend otherwise is to abandon the very people we claim to care about and to simply deny human nature.
Equally, we should examine why some white groups are overrepresented in certain heinous crimes. About a decade ago, I visited Phnom Penh in Cambodia and was struck by the number of elderly (white) Western men, many in their sixties and seventies, walking with very young Asian girls. It harked to the number of high-profile cases of Western men convicted for child sexual abuse abroad (see Peter Scully and Richard Huckle). Why is this pattern seemingly common? Perhaps economic factors play a role: men from wealthy countries have the means to travel and exploit poorer nations with weaker governance. But cultural factors count too: higher consumption of extreme pornography, more older single men living in isolation with no familial guardrails, and perhaps even colonial-era attitudes of racial superiority that foster a sense of entitlement and impunity. I’m not a criminologist, but it seems worthy of serious study.
Essentially, all crimes should be dealt with without fear or favour.
Crime will likely never be eradicated, but places like Singapore and Dubai show that safety and order are not impossible goals for modern nations. It’s as if we’ve collectively given up on that ambition, even the Mayor of London Sadiq Khan claimed being prepared for terror attacks is 'part and parcel' of living in a major city. Instead, we debate terminology and representation, while people bleed in the streets.
Yes, every group contains both good and bad individuals. But we must face the reality that not all cultures or subcultures are equally conducive to peace, safety, or respect for the rule of law. If we’re serious about reducing crime, we need to be serious about understanding what causes it—even when the answers are uncomfortable.
Inaya Folarin Iman is the Founder and Director of The Equiano Project.
📢 UPCOMING EVENT
Musa al-Gharbi, in conversation with Ralph Leonard and chaired by Helen Lewis, will discuss the future of progressive politics and the cultural contradictions of today’s elite. Based on al-Gharbi’s book We Have Never Been Woke, the panel will explore whether we’re moving into a post-woke era—and what might come next.
🥂Stick around afterward for drinks and informal conversation. Tickets and info on Eventbrite.
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Excellent article. We need to be objective about the fact that different types of crime are not evenly distributed amongst racial and religious groups, and then ask what cultural factors may be at play.
Listing nationality will not provide racial, religious or cultural information will it. Surely many of the "Pakistani" Muslim rapists are formally British? Just as Axel Rudakubana is.