This week is National Hate Crime Awareness Week. And right on cue the Home Office has issued the latest figures for England and Wales.
As events at the England vs Bulgaria football match in Sofia earlier this week demonstrated all too clearly that racist abuse is far too common. As the Home Office report shows us, this can spill over into actual hate crimes.
Home Office figures show a 10 per cent rise in hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales. Figures show there were 103,379 offences in 2018-19. Within that total, transgender hate crime went up 37 per cent, sexual orientation hate crime up 25 per cent, disability hate crime up 14 per cent and religious hate crime up 3 per cent. The majority of hate crimes were race hate crimes, accounting for around three-quarters of offences (76%; 78,991 offences). These increasedby 11 per centbetween 2017/18 and 2018/19.
Before I move on to comment, it is as well to define clearly what we are talking about here. The Home Office defines "hate crime" as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.’ There are five centrally monitored strands of hate crime:
- race or ethnicity
- religion or beliefs
- sexual orientation
- disability
- transgender identity
The figures released include information on racist incidents in England and Wales recorded by the police from April 2018 to March 2019. A ‘racist incident’ is any incident, including any crime, which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race or perceived race.
According to the Home Office report:
"The increases seen over the last five years are thought to have been driven by improvements in crime recording by the police following a review by Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) in 2014 and the removal of the designation of police recorded crime as National Statistics. It also thought that growing awareness of hate crime is likely to have led to improved identification of such offences. Although these improvements are thought to be the main drivers for the increases seen, part of the increase over the last year may reflect a real rise in hate crimes recorded by the police."
Further on the Report continues:
"In contrast, the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)7, which is unaffected by changes in recording practice, shows a fall in hate crime over the last decade. According to the CSEW,the estimated number of hate crime incidents experienced by adults aged 16and overfell from 307,000 in the combined 2007/08 and 2008/09 surveys to 184,000 in the combined 2015/16, 2016/17 and 2017/18 surveys, a fall of 40 per cent. However, due to the combined survey years the CSEW is not able to identify changes in hate crime over shorter-term periods, and the most recently published estimates do not cover 2018/19."
But whatever is going on, one hate crime is one too many. That is especially true in a multi-ethnic and multi-religious city such as Leicester.
Abuse or violence directed at someone on the basis of their identity is never acceptable. That’s why the Conservative Government is committed to tackling hate crime in all its forms through the Government’s Hate Crime Action Plan. And the government works closely with stakeholders to tackle hate crime, including funding community-led projects aimed at tackling homophobic, biphobic and transphobic hate crime. Extending sentences for hate crimes against transgender people to protect those at particular risk of unprovoked violence. Murderers motivated by hatred or hostility towards disabled or transgender victims will now face life sentences with a starting point of 30 years.
The seriousness with which the police take such crimes is shown by the fact that racially or religiously aggravated offences were more likely to be dealt with by a charge/summons than their non-aggravated counterparts, reflecting the serious nature of racially or religiously aggravated offences. In particular:
* 13% of racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm and distressoffences had been dealt with by charge/summons compared with 5% of the non-aggravated equivalent offences;
* 12% of racially or religiously aggravated assault offences had been dealt with by charge/summons compared with 8% of non-aggravated assaults;
* 7% of racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage offences resulted in charge/summons, compared with 5% of non-aggravated criminal damageoffences.
There is, of course, no room for complacency. All crimes, including hate crimes, must be countered and tackled not only with vigorous police action but crime prevention action and constructive dialogue with the many communities living in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
