How the government analyses sensitive personal data has long been a point of argument for citizens of a ‘free’ democracy.

Data protection safeguards to prevent abuse are enshrined in law – but an exception is government departments and official agencies can collude to swop personal data without requiring an individual’s express permission.

The Ministry of Justice and the Department of Work & Pensions are collaborating on a new study linking databases of benefit claimants and offenders to ‘learn’ whether the data can give insights in to the lives of individuals who appear on both lists.

The analysts are looking for patterns between claimants and offenders in the ‘overlap’ of names on both databases, according to research group Civitas.

The comparison raises some questions:

• Does the overlap provide a large enough data sample for statistical analysis?

• Is the comparison the result of a hypothesis, like benefit claimants are more likely to be criminals, or are the analysts just scouting available data because it’s available?

• Will the results be worthwhile without testing the results against the reverse database – individuals who do not claim benefits who might have criminal records?

Apparently, the analysis shows that more than half of those sentenced had been claiming out-of-work benefits in that month, with almost a quarter on Job-Seekers Allowance.

For theft or handling stolen goods, around 66% were out-of-work benefits and 22% in work.

The dataset matched recordable offences – basically those that give someone a criminal record – so motoring and minor offences, like not having a TV licence, were excluded. In the period under analysis, which started at the end of 2010, 1.2 million people were claiming out-of-work benefits and 400,000 offenders were listed as having a criminal conviction in the past 10 years.

Looking back further is limited by laws relating to the rehabilitation of offenders.

The statistics also revealed almost half (47%) of prisoners claimed benefits for the two years following their release – with 11% returning to prison in the same period and just one in six finding a job.

The message of the data linkage is that society does not have to presume that a whole category of people break the rules,” said the Civitas report. “There are people that commit offences that have jobs and who do not claim benefits. There are people receiving benefits that have never committed any offence. The linking gets beyond that.

“It is possible to tell which individuals both claim benefits and commit offences. It is even possible to tell whether they have little success finding honest employment. In those cases, there is a much stronger argument for suggesting that people could be obliged to work for their benefits, especially when considering that this may apply to around a quarter of out-of-work benefit claims.”