Hate Crimes; What is the real number?
Date of publication: 23th October 2012
A hate crime is any criminal offence committed against a person or property that is motivated by hostility towards someone based on disability, race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation.
According to the BBC NEWS UK more than 2000 such offences were recorded in 2011, up one third from 2010. Police have said this was partly due to an increased willingness to report crimes. Overall hate crimes linked to race religion sexual orientation and disability fell by 3600 to 44,500. Hate crime monitoring began in 2008 to raise awareness of the problem. In 2011 a total of 44,519 hate crimes were recorded compared with 48,127 in 2010.
According to the home office website I have found there were 43,748 hate crimes recorded by police in 2011/2012. These figures are related to the five monitored strands of the hate crime classifications used by the criminal justice system and is not a count of crimes as more than one form of hate crime can be assigned to an offence. Indicative data suggest that less than 5% of hate crime offences have more than one monitored strand assigned ( this ranged between 1% and 7% of offences for the 17 forces whose data was reviewed).
Of the 43,748 hate crimes recorded by police:
- *35,816 (82%) were race hate crimes
- *1621 (4%) were religion hate crimes
- *4252 (10%) were sexual orientation hate crimes
- *1744 (4%) were disability hate crimes
- *315 (1%) were transgender hate crimes.
There is a discrepancy in numbers by 751 hate crimes. I’m not sure what database the BBC NEWS got there information from; maybe different from the home office? Is that why there is a slight difference in numbers? What I have noticed is the home office seems to have broken down the statistics so we as a public get an actual over view of what a hate crime is and how the statistics are going down slightly. If anyone has any information regarding this discrepancy in numbers, please comment below.
Year 1 Student – Crime & Investigative Studies
University Centre Peterborough
Supervisor: A. Smith; B.A. (Hons) Criminology Course Leader