Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2015 / 16
Flagged hate crime offences – Home Office Data Hub
The Home Office have implemented an improved data collection system called the Home Office Data Hub which is designed to streamline the process by which forces submit data. The Data Hub replaces the old system by capturing record level crime data via direct extracts from forces ' own crime recording systems. This allows the police to provide more detailed information to the Home Office enabling a greater range of analyses to be carried out. The migration of forces to the Data Hub is ongoing and for forces providing data via the Data Hub it is possible to exploit this richer data and conduct a more in depth analysis of hate crime offences.
Using the Data Hub, it is possible to see how offences flagged as being motivated by one or more of the five monitored strands have been dealt with by the police. The analyses presented are based on data from 24 13 of the 44 police forces in England and Wales that supplied adequate data to the Data Hub; these forces accounted for 62 per cent of all police recorded hate crime in 2015 / 16.
In total, 98 per cent of hate crime flagged offences recorded in 2015 / 16 had been assigned an outcome by the time the data were extracted from the Data Hub. 14 The remaining two per cent were still under investigation. Ninety-seven per cent of non-hate crime offences had been assigned an outcome by the date of extraction.
Appendix table 2.04 shows that 21 per cent of all hate crime flagged offences had been dealt with by a charge or summons. As shown in Figure 2.4, the offences recorded by the police that constitute hate crimes are very different to overall crime; therefore comparisons in charge / summons rates are shown below for certain offence groups rather than overall crime.
Figure 2.3 shows that violence against the person, public order offences and criminal damage and arson offences comprise 96 per cent of hate crime flagged offences. This proportion is the same for the 24 forces included in this analysis, suggesting that these 24 forces are representative of the national picture. The proportions of outcomes assigned varied by offence type( Appendix table 2.05; Figure 2.7):
�
�
�
Violence against the person offences flagged as hate crimes were more likely to be dealt with by charge / summons than non-hate violence( 21 % compared with 17 %). A quarter( 25 %) of hate crime flagged violence against the person offences were assigned the outcome‘ investigation complete – no suspect identified’, compared with 15 % of non-hate crime flagged violence against the person offences.
The proportion of offences dealt with by a charge / summons was the same for hate crime flagged public order offences and non-hate crime public order offences( 22 %). Hate crime flagged public order offences were less likely to be dealt with by a caution than non-hate crime public order offences( 3 % compared with 6 %).
Thirteen per cent of hate crime flagged criminal damage and arson offences has been dealt with by a charge or summons, compared with eight per cent for non-hate crime criminal damage and arson offences.
Figure 2.8 shows the proportion of hate crimes that were dealt with by charge or summons for each of the five hate crime strands for the three offence groups most commonly flagged as hate crime: violence against the person, public order offences and criminal damage.
13 Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, Cambridgeshire, Cheshire, Cleveland, Devon and Cornwall, Dyfed-Powys,
Gloucestershire, Gwent, Hampshire, Lancashire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, South Wales, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Thames Valley, Warwickshire and West Mercia. 14 September 2016.
12