Hate crimes, England and Wales, 2020 to 2021 (2023)

Release Frequency: Annual

Next version:Statistics publication calendar of the Ministry of the Interior

Home Office Statistician: John Flatley

The press asks:pressoffice@homeoffice.gov.uk, Telephone: 0300 123 3535

Public consultations:crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk

This press release contains police recorded hate crime statistics in England and Wales.

Main results

• in the year ending March 2021, police in England and Wales recorded 124,091 hate crimes
• excluding Greater Manchester Police who did not provide data for the year ending March 2020, there was a 9% increase compared to the previous year

• increases in police-recorded hate crimes in recent years have been driven by improvements in crime recording and better identification of what constitutes a hate crime
• as in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for about three quarters of these crimes (74%; 85,268 crimes); these types of hate crimes increased by 12% between the year ending March 2020 and the year ending March 2021

1.Introduction

1.1Overview

This statistical bulletin provides information on the number of hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales for the year ending March 2021. Greater Manchester Police data was excluded from any year-on-year comparison in this bulletin because were unable to provide data for the year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019.

1.2Hate crimes registered by the police

Hate crimes are defined as "any criminal offense that is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice against someone based on a personal characteristic." This common definition was agreed in 2007 by the police, the Crown Prosecution Service, the Prison Service (now the National Offender Management Service) and other agencies that make up the criminal justice system. There are five centrally monitored hate crime lines:

• race or ethnicity
• religion or beliefs
• sexual orientation
• inability
• transgender identity

In the process of registering a crime, the police can mark a crime as motivated by one or more of these five monitored elements^{[footnote 1]}for example, a crime may be motivated by hostility towards the race and religion of the victim). For more information, see Section 4 - Hate Crime Data Sources and Quality. Therefore, the hate crime numbers in this bulletin depend on whether a flag is correctly applied to a crime identified as a hate crime.

The College of Police (CoP) released updated guidance on how police should respond to hate crimes in October 2020.Authorized professional guidance on hate crimesincludes information about what may be covered by hate crimes. The guide says:

“A hate crime is any crime that the victim or any other person perceives to be motivated by hostility or bias based on:

• a person's race or perceived race, or any racial group or ethnic origin, including UK countries and Roma and Traveler groups; this includes asylum seekers and migrants
• a person's religion or perceived religion, or any religious group, including those without faith
• a person's sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation, or the sexual orientation of any person
• a person's disability or perceived disability, or any disability, including physical disability, learning disability, and mental health or developmental disorders
• a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender, including transgender, transgender, transvestite, and those who hold a Gender Recognition Certificate under the Gender Recognition Act 2004

The inclusion of immigrants in the first category listed above means that crimes with a xenophobic element (such as graffiti targeting certain nationalities) can be registered as hate crimes by the police.

A crime may also be motivated by hatred of a characteristic (strand) that is currently not centrally controlled and therefore not part of the data collection presented in this statistical bulletin (age or gender, for example). example).

Hate crimes are defined as any crime in which the perpetrator's hostility or prejudice towards an identifiable group of people is a determining factor in determining who the victim is. While a crime can be registered as a “hate crime”, it can only be prosecuted as such if evidence of hostility is presented as part of the case file.

Terrorist crimes may or may not qualify as hate crimes, depending on the circumstances. A terrorist attack may be directed against general British or Western values, rather than one of five specific strands. Therefore, attacks of this nature are not covered by this statistical bulletin, although they are clearly motivated by hate. However, other terrorist attacks are motivated by hate against one of the centrally monitored strands of hate crime covered by this statistical bulletin. For example, the Finsbury Park Mosque attack in June 2017 was classified as a hate crime because the victims were targeted because of their religious affiliation.

The Law Commission is considering proposals to reform hate crime laws to eliminate the disparity in how hate crime laws treat each protected characteristic: race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, and transgender identity, and is expected to report its further recommendations. forward in 2021. Any proposal from the Legal Commission may lead to future changes in the future coverage of the monitored threads.

1.3Hate crimes and racially or religiously aggravated crimes

There are some crimes in the main collection of crimes recorded by the police that have specific elements of racial or religious motivation as defined by law. These constitute a set of offenses that are distinct from their non-racial or religiously aggravated equivalents (the complete list of which is provided in Listing 1.1). These racially or religiously aggravated crimes are, by definition, hate crimes. Just over half (53%) of hate crimes are recorded as one of these racially or religiously aggravated crimes.

List 1.1 The five racially or religiously aggravated crimes and their non-aggravated equivalents

Racially or religiously aggravated crimes
offense code8p
Description of the crimeRacially or religiously aggravated assault with battery
Non-aggravated equivalent crimes
offense code8N
Description of the crimeassault with wound

Racially or religiously aggravated crimes
offense code105B
Description of the crimeAggravated aggravation for racial or religious reasons without prejudice
Non-aggravated equivalent crimes
offense code105A
Description of the crimeassault without injury

Racially or religiously aggravated crimes
offense code8m
Description of the crimeRacially or religiously aggravated harassment
Non-aggravated equivalent crimes
offense code8L
Description of the crimeHarassment

Racially or religiously aggravated crimes
offense code9B
Description of the crimePublic fear, alarm or distress aggravated by racial or religious issues
Non-aggravated equivalent crimes
offense code9a
Description of the crimePublic fear, alarm or distress

Racially or religiously aggravated crimes
offense code58J
Description of the crimeCriminal damages aggravated for racial or religious reasons
Non-aggravated equivalent crimes
offense code58A
Description of the crimeCriminal damage to a home
offense code58B
Description of the crimeCriminal damage to a building other than a dwelling
offense code58C
Description of the crimecriminal damage to a vehicle
offense code58D
Description of the crimeOther criminal damages

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior

1.4Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

The CSEW is a face-to-face victimization survey and also provides information on hate crime suffered by residents of England and Wales. However, the CSEW sample size means that the number of hate crime incidents and victims estimated in a single survey year is too unreliable to report. Therefore, three annual data sets are combined to provide a larger sample that can be used to produce robust estimates for hate crime. The survey estimates were last published in 'Hate crime, England and Wales, 2019 to 2020'. The next release of the CSEW figures was supposed to be in 2023, but it may be delayed because the face-to-face survey was suspended due to public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic.

2.Police record hate crimes

Main results

• in the year ending March 2021, police in England and Wales recorded 124,091 hate crimes; of which 92,052 racial hate crimes, 6,377 religious hate crimes, 18,596 sexual orientation hate crimes, 9,943 disability hate crimes, and 2,799 transgender hate crimes
• excluding Greater Manchester Police^{[footnote 2]}, which did not provide data for the year ending March 2020, police in England and Wales recorded 114,958 hate crimes in the year ending March 2021, an increase of nine per cent compared to the year ending March 2020. 2020 (105,362 crimes); While the increase in hate crime over the past five years has been mainly due to improvements in police record keeping, there have been spikes in hate crime following certain events, such as the EU referendum. and the 2017 terrorist attacks.
• as in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for about three-quarters of all crimes (74%; 85,268 crimes); Racially motivated hate crimes increased 12% between the year ending March 2020 and the year ending March 2021
• religious hate crimes fell 18% (to 5,627 crimes from 6,856 the year before); this was the second straight drop in religious hate crime since a peak of 7,202 crimes in the year ending March 2019
• sexual orientation hate crimes increased by seven percent (to 17,135), disability hate crimes by nine percent (to 9,208), and transgender identity hate crimes by three percent (to 2,630). ; these percentage increases were lower than those observed in recent years
• more than half (52%) of the hate crimes registered by the police were for crimes against public order and 40% for violence against the person; five percent were recorded as criminal damage and arson

2.1prevalence and trends

Police forces have made significant improvements in the way they record crimes since 2014. They have also improved in identifying what constitutes a hate crime. Due to these changes, crime figures recorded by police currently do not provide reliable trends in hate crime. However, the figures provide a good measure of the demand on the police related to hate crimes. For more information, see theSources registered by the police and quality of data on hate crimes.

Hate crimes are a subset of reportable crimes recorded by police. In the year ending March 2021, three percent of crimes recorded by police were identified as hate crimes. That proportion has gradually increased from 1 percent in the year ending March 2013, as police have improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime.

There were 124,091 hate crimes reported by police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2021. Excluding Greater Manchester Police, who were unable to provide data for the year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019, there were 114,958 hate crimes, an increase of nine percent compared to the year ending March 2020 (105,362 crimes; see Table 2.1).

Religious hate crimes fell 18% (from 6,856 to 5,627), which was the second consecutive drop in these crimes and below the peak in the year ending March 2019 (when there were 7,202 crimes). There were increases in other hate crime categories, including sexual orientation (up 7%), disability (9%), and transgender identity (3%) over the past year. However, these percentage variations were lower than those observed in recent years.

Increases seen over the past six years are believed to have been driven by improvements in police record of offences, following a review by the HM Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue. Rescue Services, HMICFRS).^{[footnote 3]}in 2014 and the removal of the designation of crimes recorded by the police as National Statistics^{[footnote 4]}. He also considered that the growing awareness of hate crimes has likely led to better identification of such crimes.

While these improvements are considered to be the main drivers of the observed increases, there appear to have been genuine short-term increases in hate crime after certain trigger events. Increases in hate crimes were observed around the EU referendum in June 2016 and the terrorist attacks in 2017. There was also an increase in hate crimes against public order during the summer of 2020 following the widespread protests of Black Lives Matter and far-right counter-protests. .

Table 2.1: Hate Crimes Recorded by Police by Track Monitored, Year Ended March 2016 to Year Ended March 2020

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior. Numbers exclude GMP.
See Table 2 of the Bulletin for detailed footnotes.

A crime may have more than one motivating factor (for example, a crime may be motivated by hostility toward the victim's race and religion). Therefore, in addition to recording the total number of hate crimes, the police also collect data on the number of motivating factors by branch, as shown in Table 2.1. For this reason, the sum of the five previous motivators exceeds the 114,958 hate crimes registered by the police. It is estimated that about five percent of hate crimes in the year ending March 2021 involved more than one motivator.^{[footnote 5]}.

Hate crime data by police force area for the year ending March 2012 to the year ending March 2021 can be found at the Home OfficePolice recorded open data tables on crimes and results.

Section 2.2 shows that 92% of hate crimes in the year ending March 2021 were due to public order or violence against the person, continuing the pattern observed in previous years. These two groups of crimes are thought to have previously been subject to relatively high levels of underreporting, and therefore improvements in crime registration are likely to have had a greater impact on these groups than on other crimes. Figure 2.1 shows the indexed trend in violent and public order crime since the year ending March 2013, compared to all hate crimes during the same period. As can be seen, there is a strong correlation between the increase in global public order and crimes of violence against the person and hate crimes.

En contraste, o Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW)^{[footnote 6]}, which covers crimes not reported to the police^{[footnote 7]}Unaffected by changes in registration practice, it shows a drop in hate crimes over the past decade. According to CSEW, the estimated number of hate crime incidents experienced by adults age 16 and older decreased from 307,000 in the combined year ending March 2008 and March 2009 to 190,000 in the combined year ending in March 2009. year ending March 2019 and in surveys for the year ending March 2020, 38% less. However, due to the combination of years of research, the CSEW is unable to identify changes in hate crime in shorter time periods.

Figure 2.1: Indexed evolution of the number of police records of violence against the person and against public order and hate crimes, from the year ending March 2013 to the year ending March 2021 (year ending March 2013 = 100 )

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior. Numbers exclude GMP.

religious hate crimes

In April 2016, the Home Office began collecting information from the police on the alleged religion of victims of religious hate crime. By perceived, we mean the religion the offender is targeting. While in most crimes the actual and perceived religion of the victim will be the same, in some cases they will be different. For example, if anti-Muslim graffiti is painted on a religious temple of another faith, this would be recorded as a racially or religiously motivated aggravated criminal damage offense and flagged as a religious hate crime against Muslims by the respective police force.

There are nine different perceived religious flags in this collection, matching those reported in the 2021 Census:

• buddhist
• cristiano
• Hindu
• Jew
• Muslim
• sij
• other
• without religion
• a stranger

Of the 6,377 religious hate crimes recorded by police in the year ending March 2021 (including Greater Manchester Police), information on the targeted religion was provided for 5,948 of the crimes (93%).^{[footnote 8]}.

In some cases, more than one perceived religion was tagged in a crime (for example, graffiti may be directed at more than one religion). All police forces reported data on the perceived religion of religious hate crime victims (with the exception of Nottinghamshire, which was unable to provide this data for the year ending March 2021), although for some forces the number of crimes registered with 'religion unknown' ' was relatively high.

In the year ending March 2021, when the victim's perceived religion was recorded, just under half (45%) of religious hate crimes targeted Muslims (2,703 crimes). The next most targeted group were Jews, who were the target of 22% of religious hate crimes (1,288 crimes). These proportions were similar to those of the previous year.

In 16 percent of the crimes, the target religion was unknown. Information on other destination religions for the year ending March 2021 can be found in Table 2.2.

Table 2.2: Number and proportion of religious hate crimes recorded by the police¹, by perceived religion of destination, year ended March 2020

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior. Figures exclude Nottinghamshire. See Table 3 of the Bulletin for detailed footnotes.
1. In some crimes, more than one religion was registered as a target, so the sum of the proportions does not add up to 100%.

Offenses with a racial or religious aggravating factor

The data received by the Ministry of the Interior is available monthly in the main report of crimes registered by the police for aggravated racial or religious crimes^{[footnote 9]}. This allows you to see the annual trend of these crimes at the time of specific incidents. An indexed chart of these offenses and their non-aggravated equivalent offenses is shown in (Figure 2.2). There are three clear peaks in these aggravated crimes that were not seen in non-aggravated crimes: July 2016, after the EU referendum, July 2017, after the terrorist attacks this year, and summer 2020, after Black Lives matter. Far-right protests and counter-protests following the death of George Floyd on May 25 in the United States of America. There are also spikes in July 2018 and 2019, but they follow the same trend as non-aggravated violations.

Figure 2.2: Indexed number of racially or religiously motivated aggravated crimes recorded by police by month, April 2015 to March 2021

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior.

2.2Hate crimes by type of crime

The data in this section covers the year ending March 2021 and includes figures from the Greater Manchester Police. More than half (52%) of the hate crimes registered by the police were for crimes against public order and more than a third (40%) for violence against the person (Graph 2.3; Table 6 of the Bulletin). Together, these crime categories accounted for just over nine in ten (92%) of all police-recorded hate crimes.

Figure 2.3: Distribution of crimes designated as hate crimes, year ending March 2021

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior.

The distribution of hate crimes differs markedly from the total crimes recorded by the police. Theft crimes accounted for just under a third (28%) of all recorded crimes in the year ending March 2021; these offenses are unlikely to involve a motivating factor against a monitored stream. In contrast, public order crimes accounted for only ten percent of all reportable crimes, compared to 52 percent for hate crimes (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4: Breakdown of Hate Crimes and Overall Reported Crimes by Selected Crime Types, Year Ended March 2021

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior.

Figure 2.5 shows what type of crimes are recorded for each track monitored. As in previous years, crimes against public order were the most common crimes recorded across the board.

Figure 2.5: Breakdown of hate crimes by selected crime type and supervised monitoring, year ending March 2021

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior.

2.3Results of hate crimes

The Ministry of the Interior collects information on the results of the investigation of crimes recorded by the police, including those identified as hate crimes. For more information on the results, seeCrime results in England and Wales: year ending March 2021.

This section addresses how police handled hate crimes reported in the year ending March 2021. This analysis is based on results attributed to crimes reported in the year ending March 2021 at the time they were extracted. the data (June 2021). . Some offenses will not have a score assigned at this time and therefore these numbers are subject to change.

Results of racially or religiously aggravated crimes

The data presented in this section is for racially or religiously aggravated crimes. These data were available for all police forces. Data on the outcomes of all hate crimes, which were available for 26 of the 44 police forces^{[footnote 10]}are presented in the next section.

At the time this data was extracted, 89 percent of racially or religiously aggravated crimes received a result compared to 94 percent of their unaggravated counterparts (data not shown).

Figure 2.6 shows that racially or religiously aggravated crimes were more likely to be addressed by an indictment or citation than their non-aggravated counterparts, reflecting the severity of racially or religiously aggravated crimes. For example, twice the proportion of racially or religiously aggravated crimes of fear, alarm, and public distress were addressed by prosecution or summons as equivalent non-aggravated crimes (13% and 6%, respectively).

Figure 2.6: Percentage of Racially or Religiously Aggravated Crimes and Their Non-Aggravated Equivalents Recorded in the Year Ending March 2021 Resulting in a Charge or Citation, by Crime Type

Fuente:Crime registered by the police, Ministry of the Interior.

The overall proportion of racially or religiously aggravated crimes that resulted in a charge or citation was 11.6%, higher than the figure for the year ending March 2020 at the time of last year's publication (10, 7%). This increase was due to a 1.6 percentage point increase in the proportion of crimes of fear, alarm, or public distress with racial or religious aggravations that received an indictment or citation, from 11.0% to 12.6% (data not available). shown) . This increase interrupted a previous downward trend seen since the introduction of the Results Framework in the year ending March 2015, when, for example, 30% of racially or religiously aggravated fear, alarm or distress crimes were resolved by an indictment or summons. As explained in the 'Crime results, England and Wales, 2020 to 2021’ statistical bulletin, the volume of complaints had been falling in recent years at the same time that the volume of crimes registered by the police increased. This pattern was also seen in racially or religiously aggravated crimes. There is evidence to suggest that a higher proportion of recorded crimes in recent years have been for types of crime that may be more difficult to investigate. This means that the number of investigation cases has grown and has become more complex.

Flagged Hate Crimes – Headquarters Data Center

The Home Office implemented an enhanced data collection system called the Home Office Data Center, designed to streamline the process by which forces submit data. The Data Hub replaces the old system, capturing criminal data at the record level through direct extracts from the forces' own criminal record systems. This allows the police to provide the Home Office with more detailed information, allowing for a broader range of analysis.

Through the Data Hub it is possible to verify how the offenses marked as motivated by one or more of the five aspects monitored have been handled by the police. The analyzes presented are based on data from 26^{[footnote 11]}of the 44 police forces in England and Wales that provided adequate data to the Data Hub; Data from these forces accounted for around two-thirds (66%) of all police-recorded hate crimes in the year ending March 2021.

In total, 91% of flagged hate crimes recorded in the year ending March 2021 received a result by the time the data was pulled from Data Hub.^{[footnote 12]}. The remaining nine percent were still under investigation. Similarly, 92 percent of non-hate crimes received a result at the time of data extraction (data not shown).

Appendix Table 4 shows that ten percent of all crimes flagged as hate crimes were handled via indictment or citation, up from the published figure of nine percent in the year ending March 2020. o citations had decreased since the introduction of the Results Framework.

The crimes recorded by the police that constituted hate crimes were very different from global crime. Therefore, to provide more meaningful comparisons, billing or citation rates are shown below for certain groups of crimes.

Figure 2.4 shows that violence against the person, crimes against public order, and criminal damage and arson accounted for 97% of reported hate crimes. This relationship is the same for the 26 forces included in this analysis, suggesting that these forces are broadly representative of all.

The proportions of the scores attributed varied according to the type of infraction (Appendix Table 5; Figure 2.7):

• eight percent of crimes of violence against the person flagged as hate crimes, and seven percent of crimes flagged as criminal mischief and arson hate crimes, were addressed by prosecution or citation, proportions similar to crimes no flag (7% and 5%, respectively)
• a higher proportion (12%) of hate crimes designated as public order crimes were prosecuted through an indictment or summons compared to non-hate crimes designated as public order crimes (8%) )

Figure 2.7: Percentage of Selected Crimes Handled by Prosecution or Summons, Crimes Recorded in the Year Ending March 2021, 26 Forces

Fuente:Police recorded crime, head office data center.

The most frequent result recorded for violent crimes was "evidential difficulties because the victim does not support the action"; this was the result of 32 percent of hate crimes marked as violence against the person, compared to 44 percent of crimes not marked as hate (Annex Table 5).

Figure 2.8 shows the proportion of hate crimes that were addressed by prosecution or citation for each of the five types of hate crime across three crime groups.

Figure 2.8: Percentage of Selected Crimes Resulting in Prosecution or Citation, by Hate Crime Branch, Crimes Reported in the Year Ending March 2021, 26 Forces

Fuente:Police recorded crime, head office data center.

Figure 2.9 shows the average number of days to assign a result, from the date the crime was recorded, for selected hate crimes and non-hate crimes. Hate crimes, on average, took longer to receive a final outcome than non-hate crimes. For example, the average number of days it took to assign a result for hate crimes criminal damage and arson was 24 days, compared to four days for non-hate crimes. Similarly, it took longer to assign an outcome to hate crimes against the person (median = 39 days) than to violent crimes marked as non-hate crimes (median = 20 days). This pattern is seen in most results, including indictment or citation, evidentiary difficulty results, and investigation completed with no suspects identified. For example, it took an average of 101 days to assign a charge of violence against the person for a hate crime, compared to 46 days for a violent crime not related to a hate crime. This suggests that more investigative efforts are being devoted to hate crimes, reflecting the seriousness of these crimes.

Figure 2.9: Average Days Required to Assign a Result, Reported Hate Crimes and Unreported Hate Crimes, Reported Results for Year Ended March 2021, 26 Forces

Fuente:Police recorded crime, head office data center.

3.Sources registered by the police and quality of data on hate crimes

3.1Introduction

In January 2014, the UK Statistics Authority published its assessment of ONS crime statistics. It found that statistics based on police recorded crime data, having been assessed in accordance with the Code of Practice for Official Statistics (now the Code of Practice for Statistics), did not meet the standard required for designation as National Statistics.

Police forces have made significant improvements in the way they record crimes since 2014. They have also improved in identifying what constitutes a hate crime during this period. Due to these changes, crime figures recorded by police currently do not provide reliable trends in hate crime. However, the figures provide a good measure of the demand on the police related to hate crimes.

The UK Statistics Authority has published a list of requirements for these statistics to regain National Statistics accreditation. Some of the requirements of this evaluation were to provide more details on how the data sources were used to produce these statistics, along with more information on the quality of the statistics. In addition, there was a requirement to provide information on the process used by police forces to submit and review data and the validation processes used by the Home Office. To ensure this publication meets the high standards required by the UK Statistics Authority, details have been provided below.

3.2Data sources of crimes recorded by the police and validation process

The 43 territorial police forces in England and Wales, as well as the British Transport Police, provide hate crime data to the Home Office. Greater Manchester Police were unable to provide data for the year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019; as such, they are excluded from any year-over-year comparison.

Forces provide data at least monthly through the Headquarters Data Center (HODH) or annually in a manual statement. For forces with data in the Data Center, the Home Office extracts the number of breaches for each force that were flagged by the forces as motivated by one or more of the monitored aspects. Therefore, hate crime counts through HODH depend on the flag used for each hate crime. It is then possible to derive the crime count and the covered monitored threads.

In manual feedback, police forces report the total number of hate crimes (i.e., a count of the number of unique crimes motivated by one or more of the five monitored drivers) and the monitored drivers (or motivating factors) associated with them. crimes. As of the year ending March 2016, police forces manually returning data were required to provide an offending group breakdown for reported hate crimes; Prior to the year ending March 2016, only one aggregate hate crime total was requested for each of the five chapters. It is possible that more than one of the monitored aspects (motivating factors) are attributed to a crime. For example, a crime could be motivated by hostility towards race and religion, then both counts would count, but would only constitute one crime.

It is known that, for some police forces, the inclusion of labels in criminal records could be improved. For example, there may be crimes that are operationally treated as hate crimes but have not been correctly identified as hate crimes in your crime registration system. In July 2018, the HM Police Inspectorate and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published a report on how police deal with hate crime, including how crimes are flagged . Findings included a lack of recognition within law enforcement of the importance of reporting hate crimes and concerns about the lack of effective audit mechanisms to verify that alerts were applied correctly.

The full report can be found here:Making sense of difference: the initial police response to hate crimes.

In July 2021, the government announced plans to publish an updated hate crime strategy this year. The strategy will outline plans for how the government will work with police and other law enforcement agencies to improve police response to hate crimes.

More information on how hate crimes are recorded on the police register can be found at the Police College.Authorized professional practice guidance on hate crimesPost launched in October 2020.

At the end of each fiscal year, the Home Office performs a series of quality control checks on hate crime data collected from law enforcement (either through aggregate feedback or through HODH).

These controls include:

• looking for large or unusual changes in hate crimes from the previous year
• looking for outliers
• verify if the number of hate crimes per chapter is greater than the total number of crimes; where these two numbers were the same, the force was asked to confirm that they were registering multiple hate crime lines

Law enforcement is then asked to investigate these trends and provide an explanation or resubmit numbers where reconciliation identifies data quality issues.

The data is then tabulated by monitored slope and year and submitted to forces for verification. At this stage, they are asked to confirm in writing that the data they submitted is correct, and if not, they are given the opportunity to review their numbers.

Starting in April 2016, the Home Office began collecting information from police about the perceived religion of religious hate crime victims – the religion the offender is targeting. While in most crimes the perceived and actual religion of the victim is the same, in some cases this may be different. For example, if anti-Muslim graffiti is painted on a religious temple of another faith, this would be recorded as a racially or religiously motivated aggravated criminal damage offense and flagged as a religious hate crime against Muslims by the respective police force. This position was voluntary in the fiscal year ended March 2017 and became mandatory in the fiscal year ended March 2018.

Since April 2021, the Home Office has started collecting the ethnicity of victims of racial hate crimes registered by the police. These data will be published in the next statistical bulletins on hate crimes.

The Home Office is also discussing with police forces the future collection of experimental data for crimes of violence against the person (including stalking and harassment) and sexual crimes in which the victim perceives that he was motivated by hostility based on his sex. This data collection will be reviewed when the Judicial Commission's review of hate crime legislation is published later this year.

5.Other information

backing tables

The data tables can be found here:
Hate crimes, England and Wales, 2020 to 2021

Other related posts

Previous Hate Crime Statistical Bulletins published by the Home Office are available here:
hate crime statistics

The Office for National Statistics publishes quarterly publications on crime in England and Wales:
crime and justice

Information on the results of the crime can be found here:
Crime results in England and Wales statistics

Crimes recorded by the police and open data tables

The True Vision website has more information on hate crimes and how to report them.

The Crown Prosecution Service website also contains hate crime information, including policies, guidelines and performance information, which can be found here:
CPS hate crime

The government's plan to tackle hate crime in England and Wales can be found here:
Hate Crimes Action Plan 2016 to 2020

Northern Ireland hate crime statistics can be found here:
Northern Ireland Police Service: Hate Motivation Statistics

Scotland's hate crime statistics for the year ending March 2021 can be found here:
Hate crimes in Scotland 2020 to 2021
(figures released by the Scottish government are based on the number of offenders charged rather than crimes recorded by the police)

Comments and inquiries

We welcome feedback on the annual statistics publication. If you have any comments or concerns about this publication, please contact Crime and Policing Statistics atcrimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gsi.gov.uk.