Contrary to popular stereotype, the crime rate in Roma communities is significantly lower than the average in Ukraine. This was stated on July 31 during a roundtable at the Office of the Ombudsman, by the expert Oleg Martinenko who commented on the results of the study “Monitoring of observance of Roma rights in the activities of law enforcement agenies.” The research was conducted by the experts and representatives of NGOs supported by the International Foundation “Renaissance.”
“The stereotypical perception of Roma as an asocial group has long existed in the minds of most ordinary citizens. But let’s operate on facts and official statistics. For example, let’s compare the number of crimes committed by Roma with the overall figure for Ukraine. The analysis of this comparison in Transcarpathian, Odesa, Poltava and Cherkasy regions, where there are many Roma communities, demonstrated that the rate of criminal activity among Roma is 2.5 times lower than the overall crime rate in Ukraine”, – Oleg Martinenko said.
During the study, they also analyzed the texts of judgments (in terms of specifying ethnicity of defendants), and state statistics.