Today the Home Office released statistics on reported Hate Crime in England and Wales over the period 2018/19 which show a marked increase of reported hate crime.
Key results from the report include:
There were 103,379 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2018/19, an increase of ten per cent compared with 2017/18 (94,121 offences). While increases in hate crime over the last five years have been mainly driven by improvements in crime recording by the police, there has been spikes in hate crime following certain events such as the EU Referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017.
The majority of hate crimes were race hate crimes, accounting for around three quarters of offences (76%; 78,991 offences). These increased by 11 per cent between 2017/18 and 2018/19.
Religious hate crimes increased by three per cent (to 8,566 offences), sexual orientation hate crimes increased 25 per cent (to 14,491), disability hate crimes by 14 per cent (to 8,256) and transgender identity hate crimes by 37 per cent (to 2,333).
Around twelve per cent of hate crime offences in 2018/19 were estimated to have involved more than one motivating factor, the majority of these were hate crimes related to both race and religion.
Over half (54%) of the hate crimes recorded by the police were for public order offences3 and a further third (36%) were for violence against the person offences. Five per cent were recorded as criminal damage and arson offences.
Today Galop, the LGBT+ Anti-Violence Charity also released their annual Hate Crime Report 2019; indicating that even in 2019, there are alarming levels of prejudice towards LGBT+ people, especially among young people.
1 in 10 people thought that LGBT+ people were ‘dangerous’ to other people.
1 in 10 people said that being LGBT+ could be ‘cured’.
1 in 5 people said being LGBT+ was ‘immoral or against their beliefs’. This rose to 1 in 4 among 18-24 year olds, higher than other age groups.
Around 3 in 5 people responded very positively about having LGBT+ people as neighbours. 1 in 5 people showed reluctance to the idea of LGB+ neighbours, and more than 1 in 4 to trans neighbours.
1 in 2 people agreed that hate crime has higher impact than other types of crime, and that LGBT+ people modify their behaviour in public to avoid being targeted.
However, only 4 in 10 thought that violence against LGBT+ people is a problem in the UK
The polling was based on a representative sample of 1,617 people from across the UK.