Birmingham’s Crime Hotspot: The Immigration Factor
The reality of Bordesley Green, one of Birmingham's most "diverse" and dangerous areas.
This article was inspired by a video from the Women’s Safety Initiative, which you can watch here.
The silent impact of mass migration on women’s daily lives is a stark reminder of the lengths women have to go to stay safe in a country that has promoted multiculturalism over assimilation, which has led to parallel communities with limited cross-cultural understanding.
Bordesley Green has become one of the most dangerous areas in Birmingham, with over 181 crimes per 1,000 residents, nearly double the national average. A large portion of those crimes are sexual and violent offences. A community in crisis.
In a video I watched about the dangers of Bordesley Green, one resident even said ‘it's sometimes alright depending on if you’re a man but I’m not sure for a woman’, and residents say how ‘they’ve given up on us’, referencing failing local authorities.
Now let's have a look at the crime rates:
Violence and sexual offences constitute the largest crime category in Bordesley Green, specifically 50.3% of all reported crimes in the area
Monthly crime totals in the ward consistently hover around 250–330 overall, with roughly 150-160 violent/sexual crimes per month
The ward has a higher-than-average rate of sexual and violent offences, including rapes and assaults on women
Crime in Bordesley Green is significantly higher than the UK average, with elevated rates of violence, sexual offences, robbery, drug offences, anti-social behaviour, and burglary.
Walking home shouldn’t be a risk, but in places like Bordesley Green, it is. The rate of sexual offences in this area is alarmingly high, far above the national average. Women don’t feel safe in their neighbourhoods; they’re afraid to use public spaces, to go out after dark and essentially live their lives. This isn’t just statistics, it’s real fear and real trauma. If we don’t act now to tackle this, how can we say we’re protecting our community? How can we call this home?
Now let's take a look at the demographics of Bordesley Green, which roughly has a population of 13,000
Just over 1,000 accounts for ‘white’, that's not even ‘white British’, so we know that less than 10% of these accounts are for white, British people
Over 90% of the population is non-White. Predominantly South Asian Muslim, particularly Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities
Roughly 5,223 are of Pakistani heritage, and 10,000 residents are Muslim compared to just over 1,000 being Christian
So when people like me say the natives of this country are being replaced and women are paying the price, it isn’t some vague, far-reaching ‘conspiracy’ - it's already happened. We cannot import cultures where women's rights are not respected, where consent, autonomy, and gender equality simply do not exist. When those beliefs are imported here, without challenge, they don’t disappear, they manifest in violence.`
Yet, who do we fall back on when things go wrong? The po
lice, the very systems meant to protect us all. I was mortified to find out that 51.6% of all crime cases in Bordesley Green over the last three years ended without prosecution. This paints a picture of a community facing serious challenges in both crime prevention and justice delivery. West Midlands Police, covering Bordesley Green, has been rated “inadequate” in investigative capacity. We can attribute this to:
The force has one of the highest crime volumes in the UK, but faces chronic underfunding
Only about 36% of cases get proper oversight according to official inspections
Only 2.7% of victim-based crimes result in a charge here (the national average is 5.2%)
However, like many, I’m fed up with being told there’s no connection in areas where sexual offences are high and Pakistani or Muslim populations dominate, we’re told to look away, to blame poverty or policing, anything but culture. When women are being harmed and consent and autonomy aren’t respected in certain communities, we can’t keep hiding behind the fear of offence.
This isn’t about racism - it’s about reality. When belief systems that devalue women go unchallenged, how can we keep pretending there’s no link? We’ll never protect the women paying the price for our silence.
Unfortunately, Bordesley Green is just one area in the UK that echoes many communities up and down the country. A trend that is there but many are afraid to speak up about: Tower Hamlets, Newham, Bradford, Leicester, Slough etc etc.
The counter argument that many will inevitably go to, to deny the damning truth is that ‘the majority of those people were born in the UK’. But the real issue is how, over time, we've allowed demographic shifts to fundamentally change the character of these communities, making them increasingly unrecognisable from traditional British culture.
This transformation raises important questions about integration, shared values, and the impact of women’s safety in modern day Britain.
By Saskia Teague, Communications Manager of the Women’s Safety Initiative