Fact check: Misleading Google search results on UK asylum seeker crime rate
Full Fact has seen what appear to be screenshots of Google results on this topic shared on social media in recent months.
This fact check has been compiled by Full Fact, the UK’s largest fact checking charity working to find, expose and counter the harms of bad information.
Google’s search results and its AI overview have been giving misleading answers to questions about the number of crimes committed by asylum seekers in the UK—quoting figures that were actually from 2017 in Germany.
There’s no evidence these figures reflect the current crime rate among asylum seekers in the UK, though official data is limited and neither the Office for National Statistics (ONS) nor the Home Office publish equivalent UK figures.
But in recent months we’ve seen what appear to be screenshots of some of these misleading Google search results circulated on social media.
After we contacted Google about this last week, the misleading results seem to be no longer appearing in searches on the topic.
A Google spokesperson told Full Fact: “We aim to surface relevant, high quality information in all our Search features and we continue to raise the bar for quality with ongoing updates and improvements. When issues arise—like if our features misinterpret web content or miss some context—we use those examples to improve and take appropriate action under our policies.”
This isn’t the first time Full Fact has come across AI-generated responses or search results on internet platforms displaying misleading information. We’ve previously written about Amazon Alexa users being given incorrect information and a Google snippet wrongly claiming there were health benefits to eating glass.
Internet companies should take care not to promote false or misleading information, particularly if it has the potential to cause harm.
What’s been claimed?
In recent months, Full Fact has seen a number of social media posts sharing what appear to be screenshots of Google results for searches about asylum seekers and crime in the UK. In particular, the screenshots appear to show results from Google’s ‘People also ask’ feature, which suggests specific questions and answers relating to someone’s initial search.
For example, one Facebook post shows the question “How many asylum seekers have committed crimes in the UK?”, followed by an answer saying: “The statistics show that the asylum-group is highly overrepresented for some types of crime. They account for 14.3 percent of all suspects in crimes against life (which include murder, manslaughter and involuntary manslaughter), 12.2 percent of sexual offences, 11.4 percent of thefts and 9.7 percent of body injuries.”
When Full Fact searched “asylum seeker crime rates UK” in October, we were given exactly the same text in a ‘People also ask’ box, along with a link to a Wikipedia page with this text.
Another Facebook post appears to show a screenshot of a different ‘People also ask’ box where both the same answer and same Wikipedia page feature beneath the question “What percentage of UK crimes are committed by immigrants?”.
The same text was also highlighted in a Google featured snippet from the Wikipedia page, when we searched “How many asylum seekers have committed crimes in the UK?” in mid-November.
We were given similarly misleading information by Google’s ‘AI Overview’—its AI-generated summary that appears at the top of some search results—when we searched “asylum seeker crime UK” last week. The overview said “asylum seekers are overrepresented in some types of crime in the UK” and listed the same crime types and percentages as in the above text. It went on to say: “However, the Home Office doesn’t collect statistics on crime committed by asylum seekers or other immigrant groups. Instead we rely on news coverage and other anecdotal evidence.”
Where do the figures come from?
Despite these search terms and questions—as well as the answer given by Google’s AI overview—mentioning the UK, the figures given in the responses are from Germany in 2017. The wording used in the Google results listed above almost certainly comes from a section of a Wikipedia page about immigration and crime in Germany.
The figures quoted were originally reported by the German Federal Criminal Police Office for the year 2017.
They appear to relate to the proportion of suspects with certain immigration statuses, including people registered as seeking asylum, those entitled to protection, unauthorised residents and some others.
Full Fact has not attempted to fact check the findings of the report, or look in detail at Germany’s 2017 crime figures. But the report said that in 2017 people with those immigration statuses accounted for 8.5% of all suspects in all crimes bar those related to immigration. A BBC report at the time said people with those immigration statuses made up 2% of the overall German population, and this appears to be supported by Federal Statistical Office figures on “persons seeking protection”, though we’ve not been able to confirm that the figures cover exactly the same immigration statuses.
What are the current equivalent figures in the UK?
There’s no evidence that the proportion of suspects who were asylum seekers in Germany in 2017 is the same as in the UK in 2024. But official data on this topic is limited, which means we’re not able to reliably say what the correct figures are for the UK.
The UK’s ONS confirmed to Full Fact that it doesn’t produce data relating to crime and asylum seekers. The Home Office also told Reuters that it doesn’t hold this data.
When Full Fact asked the Home Office at the end of September what data it holds on crime and asylum seekers, we were told our query would be handled as a Freedom of Information request. We’ve yet to receive a response, but have asked for any data on the proportion of suspects for various crimes who are asylum seekers.
Dr Ben Brindle, a researcher at the University of Oxford’s Migration Observatory, told Full Fact: “It’s difficult to draw conclusions about the ways migration affects crime, because official data is very limited. Where data are published, this tends to be by nationality rather than by immigration status.”
He added: “Crime is certainly one area where the impacts of migration would be better understood if more data were published.”
A 2018 report from the Migration Advisory Committee found that between 2012 and 2016, 4.7% of all criminal convictions or cautions for crimes in the UK (rather than suspects) were among people from outside the European Economic Area (EEA). This would include people from some of the countries which UK asylum seekers are most likely to come from, but that does not mean that everyone included in the figure was an asylum seeker. At the time, people from outside the EEA accounted for 4.3% of the UK population aged 16 or over.
We also have some data on the nationality of prisoners. Foreign nationals accounted for 12% of the total UK prison population as of September 30 2024.
Full disclosure: Full Fact has received funding from Google and Google.org, Google’s charitable foundation. We disclose all funding we receive over £5,000—you can see these figures here. We are editorially independent and our funders have no editorial control over our content.