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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.It's not just criminals... victims of crime, complianants and witnesses are also defined...
Identity Code... IC1 is white north european, IC2 is white south european, IC3 is black, IC4 Asian, IC5 Chinese, Japanese or any other South East Asian, IC6 Arabic or North African. The problem is that it is very subjective. Also, how is anyone going to know whether someone is from North or South Eurpoe when they are being chased down the street at night - you can bet the lawyers will want to know in court though!
To confuse it further there's also SDE (self defined ethnicity) whicb is broken down into the following:
A1: Indian. A2: Pakistani. A3: Bangladeshi. A9: Any other asian background
B1: Caribbean. B2: African. B9: Any other black background.
O1: Chinese. O9: Any other ethnic group
M1: White & Black Caribbean. M2: White & Black African. M3: White & Asian. M9: Any other mixed background
W1: White British. W2: White Irish. W9: Any other white background.
People have to be asked how they would define their ethnicity. This sometimes makes the situation worse when people don't find an ethnicity code that they feel they fit into. The most frequent (and often very vocal due to people's strength of feeling on the issue) complains are that a) they are not allowed to define themselves as Black British - they only have the options of Black African, Black Caribbean or Black Other. b) you can define yourself as White Irish but not White English, White Scotish or White Welsh.
Unfortunately the codes are set by the government and can't be changed locally. My understanding is that the codes are taken from how people define themselves in Census', so watch this space for an updtae after 2011!