19k arrests of ‘foreign nationals’

The police were asked to provide details for the number of arrests for murder, rape, all sexual offences, all violent offences, robbery and burglary.

The force advised that between 2008 and 2012 there were nearly 20k arrests - nearly 4k a year.

This would work out on average as 10 arrests per day

“For the purposes of this FOI, persons with Irish nationality were classified as foreign nationals. There will be a number of persons from Northern Ireland, who have given their nationality as Irish. UK citizens with multiple nationalities were not included in the search,” a PSNI statement read.

“For example, an individual with dual nationality of ‘UK and Chinese’ would NOT be counted as a foreign national and therefore would be excluded from the results.

“There may be some overlap in the results e.g. in ‘all sexual offences’ any rape offences were included in the search. Some custody numbers may be duplicated due to the person being arrested for multiple sets of offences, e.g. in the ‘Burglary’ results, a custody record appears three times,” the PSNI explained.