I have been trying to trace the source of a report which was all over the news yesterday: according to official statistics, 33 per cent of Britons claiming Jobseeker’s Allowance have a criminal record.
No luck with the Department for Work & Pensions Corporate [sic] web site.
In fact the source seems to have been the Daily Telegraph, whose political editor Robert Winnett wrote the article, quoting minsters who are said to describe the figures as “truly alarming.”
Well, given that one third of all men in this country are said to have acquired at least one criminal conviction by the age of 30 (& that for an indictable offence), it does not seem as if the results of this new research (made possible by another data sharing agreement between the Department for Work and Pensions and the Ministry of Justice) should have come as all that much of a surprise.
