I think I must clarify up to a point.

My posts thruout this thread have been, and remain, interrogative, not assertive. I acknowledge the over-representation in these particular communities of northern England; and puzzle as to what its cause can be. I do not think, as Jim says, that I have linked it to any particular ··culture··, tho accept that it might, as others including many in their own community have suggested, be an outcome of certain customs relating to marriage which some young men brought up with expectations learnt from what is sometimes called 'the host community'* might find frustrating.

But my posts are intended to disagree fundamentally with those who assert that there is no such over-representation as there clearly is, and/or who accuse those regarding it as an evident problem, and endeavouring to assess reasons for it, of racism ~~ an accusation which seems to me to justify, at least to some extent, the initial reluctance of the police, the courts, and other authorities involved, to go public about the matter to any extent whatever, although the results of this evasion ultimately and inevitably merely exacerbated an unfortunate situation.

I reject as irrelevancies introduction to the argument of other offences committed by other demographics in other places [like e.g. Jim's entirely inapposite & confusing adducing of a nurse's abuse of a 6 year old boy, which, like the flowers that bloom in the spring tra-la, had nothing to do with the case!].

~M~

*{a usage I dislike as somewhat patronising & unwelcoming but I can't offhand think of an alternative