Post by Admin on Aug 4, 2021 8:47:43 GMT
Why Is Disability Hate Crime So Hard To Prove?
By Hannah Shewan Stevens, Journalist
3 Aug 2021
eachother.org.uk/why-is-disability-hate-crime-so-hard-to-prove/
Under UK law, something is deemed a hate incident if the victim or anyone else thinks it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on disability, race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. It then becomes a hate crime if it crosses the boundary of criminality.
Though disability hate crime came into law in 2003 as part of the Criminal Justice Act, prosecutions are low. According to research conducted by leading disability charities Leonard Cheshire and United Response, over 7,300 disability hate crimes were reported to the police in England and Wales in 2019/20, but only one in 62 cases actually received a charge. Nearly half of all reports to police involved an element of violence, and one in ten of all reported hate crimes took place online.
“It’s the youngest of the hate crimes in the UK,” explained Dr David Wilkin, an honorary fellow at the University of Leicester, who works out of the institution’s Centre for Hate Studies. “The trouble with the UK government is that they don’t invest any money into finding out how many people are victims of it, so there’s an annual crime survey, but they never put questions about disability hate crime on it because that would involve spending money. Because they don’t put questions in the national crime survey, they don’t know how many people are affected by it, and because they don’t know how many people are affected by it, they say there’s no need to ask any questions on it.”
By Hannah Shewan Stevens, Journalist
3 Aug 2021
eachother.org.uk/why-is-disability-hate-crime-so-hard-to-prove/
Under UK law, something is deemed a hate incident if the victim or anyone else thinks it was motivated by hostility or prejudice based on disability, race, religion, gender identity or sexual orientation. It then becomes a hate crime if it crosses the boundary of criminality.
Though disability hate crime came into law in 2003 as part of the Criminal Justice Act, prosecutions are low. According to research conducted by leading disability charities Leonard Cheshire and United Response, over 7,300 disability hate crimes were reported to the police in England and Wales in 2019/20, but only one in 62 cases actually received a charge. Nearly half of all reports to police involved an element of violence, and one in ten of all reported hate crimes took place online.
“It’s the youngest of the hate crimes in the UK,” explained Dr David Wilkin, an honorary fellow at the University of Leicester, who works out of the institution’s Centre for Hate Studies. “The trouble with the UK government is that they don’t invest any money into finding out how many people are victims of it, so there’s an annual crime survey, but they never put questions about disability hate crime on it because that would involve spending money. Because they don’t put questions in the national crime survey, they don’t know how many people are affected by it, and because they don’t know how many people are affected by it, they say there’s no need to ask any questions on it.”