While young British Pakistani Muslim men are today frequently depicted as being violent, aggressive and closely associated with a range of criminal behaviour, they were once recognised as being on the whole law-abiding (Jones, 1993; Webster, 1997a; Marsh, 2006; Spalek, 2008). As Benson (1996) points out, despite the odd scare of illegal immigration, Britain's Asian population were seen as holistic, coherent and law-abiding, and were regarded as largely unproblematic. British Pakistanis were seen as more likely to be victims of crime rather than offenders (Maguire et al, 2007). In one of the earliest studies of ethnicity, Asians and Crime: The Bradford Experience, conducted by Mawby and Batta (1980), the British Asian community were commended for their low levels of offending behaviour and were perceived as being far less likely to be involved in serious offences than other groups. So the question that arises is why such a large number of young men from a religiously and culturally conservative Pakistani community are today turning to crime. There are even concerns today that factors which were previously regarded as protective against criminality for British Pakistani Muslims – such as strong family bonds, a sense of tradition, powerful religious faith – are now presented as causes, or at least facilitators, of criminality, and as being bothersome aspects of Pakistani culture (Wardak, 2000: Hudson, 2007; Croall, 2011). This chapter consequently examines the rise of this predicament; it starts by briefly examining Britain's Pakistani population before discussing some of the early incidents in which British Pakistani Muslim men came to be closely associated with criminality. It subsequently moves on to explore some of the potential reasons for the increase in the offending of young British Pakistani Muslim men.

Britain's Pakistani population

Large-scale immigration to Britain from Pakistan began in the 1950s, when Britain encouraged migration from the former colonies to satisfy its post-war labour needs. Initially men mostly in their twenties and thirties arrived to work in the UK but several years later Pakistani families also started arriving to the UK (see Chapter Two for a detailed history of Pakistani migration to the city of Bradford). Today the UK is home to the largest number of Pakistanis living in Europe.