Annex B – Hate Crime Data Sources and
Quality
INTRODUCTION
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 against the Code of
Practice for Official Statistics, did not meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics.
The UK Statistics Authority published a list of requirements for these statistics to regain the National
Statistics accreditation.
Some of the requirements of this assessment were to provide more detail on how data sources were
used to produce these statistics, along with more information on the quality of the statistics.
Additionally, there was a requirement to provide information on the process used by police forces to
submit and revise data, and the validation processes used by the Home Office. In order to ensure that
this publication meets the high standards required by the UK Statistics Authority, details are provided
below.
POLICE RECORDED CRIME DATA SOURCES AND VALIDATION PROCESS
Hate crime data are supplied to the Home Office by the 43 territorial police forces of England and
Wales, plus the British Transport Police. Forces either supply the data at least monthly via the Home
Office Data Hub or on an annual basis in a manual return. For forces with data on the Data Hub, the
Home Office extracts the number of offences for each force which have been flagged by forces as
having been motivated by one or more of the monitored strands. It is then possible to derive the count
of offences and the monitored strands covered. In the manual return, police forces submit both the
total number of hate crime offences (that is a count of the number of unique offences motivated by one
or more of the five monitored strands) and the monitored strands (or motivating factors) associated
with these offences. In the 2015/16 collection, forces returning data manually were required to provide
an offence group breakdown for recorded hate crimes; prior to 2015/16 only an aggregated total of
hate crimes for each of the five strands was asked for. It is possible for more than one of the
monitored strands (motivating factors) to be assigned to a crime. For instance an offence motivated by
hostility to race and religion would be counted twice, once under each of the strands.
Further information on how the police record hate crime can be found in the Hate Crime Operational
Guidance24 publication.
At the end of each financial year, the Home Office carry out a series of quality assurance checks on
the hate crime data collected from the police forces (either by aggregate return or via the Data Hub).
These checks include:
Looking for any large or unusual changes in hate crimes from the previous year.
Looking for outliers.
Checking that the total number of hate crimes is higher than the total number of offences.
Where these two figures were the same, the force was asked to confirm they were recording
multiple hate crime strands.
Comparing the number of racist incidents with the number of race hate crimes.
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For recording purposes, the perception of the victim, or any other person, is the defining factor in determining
whether an incident is a hate incident, or in recognising the hostility element of a hate crime. The victim does not
have to justify or provide evidence of their belief, and police officers or staff should not directly challenge this
perception. Evidence of the hostility is not required for an incident or crime to be recorded as a hate crime or hate
incident. (http://www.report-it.org.uk/files/hate_crime_operational_guidance.pdf)
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