But the number of immigrants who commit crime in Australia is a much more explosive issue.

If you're going to get a reporter who isn't a statistician to plough through detailed police figures on that topic, you'd better make sure he gets it right. Melbourne's Sunday Herald Sun didn't.

Fears our crime being imported Liam Houlihan, Crime Reporter People born overseas committed one in seven of crimes in Victoria...including a quarter of rapes and one in five murders...But the 2006 Census shows that 1.17 million people, or 26 percent of Victoria's population, were born overseas. — Sunday Herald Sun, Fears our crime being imported, 9th March, 2008

Even if those figures were right, they would mean, of course, that immigrants were committing less than their fair share of crimes.

According to the Sunday Herald Sun, a quarter of the population is foreign born, but they commit only one seventh of the crimes overall, and a fifth of the murders. But despite the paper's own figures, the headline - and the story itself - clearly imply that foreign-born Victorians are more likely to be criminals than Australian-born citizens.

The revelations have sparked calls from crime victims for tougher deportation and screening of immigrants. — Sunday Herald Sun, Fears our crime being imported, 9th March, 2008

And the worst of the immigrants, says the Sunday Herald Sun, are the Somalis.

An analysis of the police statistics and 2006 Census figures shows on average one in nine Victorians born in Somalia committed a crime in the state last year. — Sunday Herald Sun, Fears our crime being imported, 9th March, 2008

A proper analysis shows nothing of the sort. Liam Houlihan has made a crucial mistake. According to what the Sunday Herald Sun calls...

"An Anatomy of Crime in Victoria" — Sunday Herald Sun, Fears our crime being imported, 9th March, 2008

In the twelve months to June 2007, 283 Somali born people committed a crime, out of a Somali-born population in Victoria of two thousand six hundred and twenty six - roughly one in nine.

But that figure is taken from a table in the police statistics called "Alleged offenders".

Read the statistics for "Alleged offenders processed by offence category & country of birth, 2006/07" from the Victoria Police Crime Statistics 2006/07.

And a note in the preamble says about this category:

Persons are counted on each occasion they are processed ... (e.g. a person processed on three occasions will be counted three times). — Victoria Police Crime Statistics 2006/07

In other words, the table tells us that Somali-born people were involved in 283 alleged offences. But it doesn't tell us the number of people involved, because some individuals committed more than one offence.

Liam Houlihan should have looked at a different set of figures, headed "Distinct Alleged Offenders".

Read the statistics for "Distinct alleged offenders processed by country of birth and age group, 2006/07" from the Victoria Police Crime Statistics 2006/07.

According to the small print, this category...

Refers to the number of distinct individual offenders processed for the commission of an offence... — Victoria Police Crime Statistics 2006/07

So this category shows the actual number of Somali-born Victorians allegedly involved in crime.

And it's not 283, but just 115. Not one in 9 Somali-born Victorians, but one in 23.

Doesn't have quite the same ring to it, does it?

The Sunday Herald Sun's Chief of Staff, Chris Tinkler, told Media Watch:

The Sunday Herald Sun collated the figures from the table titled Alleged Offenders...because we believed it to be the most comprehensive... — Email from Chris Tinkler (Chief of Staff, Sunday Herald Sun) to Media Watch

Read Chris Tinkler's response to Media Watch's questions.

Read Chris Tinkler's response to Media Watch's additional questions.

Well, especially on a topic like this, "believed" doesn't cut it. The Sunday Herald Sun should have checked its analysis with the police statisticians, and they didn't. The result was a beat up on a much more sensitive topic than the price of copper wire.