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Sickness Benefit Claimants Remarkably Law Abiding Research Finds
A very good blog piece in response to a Daily Mail shock-horror headline about the proportion of ESA claimants with a criminal record.
According to the Mail, 23% of all sickness benefit claimants have a criminal record of some form, including a police caution. According to the Chris Grayling comedy show this is ‘truly alarming’. What’s alarming in fact is how law abiding sickness benefit claimants appear to be.
According to this Chartered Institute of Professional Development report (PDF) aimed at encouraging employers to hire people with criminals records, as many as 25% of the general population has a criminal record. As those in receipt of sickness benefit are likely to be poorer than the general population, it might have been reasonable to assume a higher percentage of claimants may have been convicted of a crime.
Many people on sickness benefits have a mental health condition. It is a sad truth that people with mental health conditions are over -represented in the criminal justice system. An increasingly few people on sickness benefits may also have a history of illegal substance misuse, once again suggesting that these would skew the figures above the general population’s level of criminality.
So in fact we should all give a big cheer to sickness benefit claimants, who despite ill health and poverty seem to be less inclined to criminality than the population as a whole.
Worth a read definitely, click here for full piece Sickness Benefit Claimants Remarkably Law Abiding Research Finds