Introduction
Table 1). These racially or religiously aggravated offences are by definition hate crimes. However, the hate crime collection on which the majority of the bulletin is based has a wider coverage of race and religious hate crime. This is because the police can identify other offences as hate crimes, not just those for which there is a separate specific racially or religiously aggravated offence for the police to record against. Therefore, the number of race or religious hate crimes in this bulletin will be greater than the total number of police recorded racially or religiously aggravated offences.
Table 1: The five racially or religiously aggravated offences and their non-aggravated equivalents
Racially or religiously aggravated offences Non-aggravated equivalent offences
Offence code |
Offence |
Offence code |
Offence |
8P Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury 8N Assault with injury 105B Racially or religiously aggravated assault without injury 105A Assault without Injury 8M Racially or religiously aggravated harassment 8L Harassment 9B Racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress 9A Public fear, alarm or distress 58J Racially or religiously aggravated other criminal damage 58A Criminal damage to a dwelling
Source: Home Office Counting Rules. Racist incidents recorded by the police
This release contains figures on the number of racist incidents reported to police forces in England and Wales( excluding British Transport Police). A‘ racist incident’ is any incident, including any crime, which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a person’ s race or perceived race.
Racist incidents can include notifiable offences, non-notifiable offences( e. g. some types of anti-social behaviour), incidents that were not subsequently recorded as crimes and‘ cancelled or transferred records’( formerly referred to as no crimes). 5 Conversely, certain race hate crimes may not have been initially recorded as racist incidents if the racial motivation was not immediately apparent and the hate motivation was therefore added after the crime was recorded. For these reasons, the racist incidents total does not match the race hate crimes total.
Since April 2016, the Home Office has ceased collecting racist incident data from the police. The collection was stopped as the hate crime time series is now sufficiently established, with data for five years included in this publication. Furthermore, from April 2016 the police forces of England and Wales have begun supplying additional data around the religion of victims of religious hate crimes. Ending the racist incident collection manages the burden on the police in supplying data to the Home Office. Therefore this is the last year in which official statistics will be published on racist incidents.
58B 58C 58D
Criminal damage to a building other than a dwelling Criminal damage to a vehicle Other criminal damage
5 A cancelled or transferred record occurs when the police have originally recorded an offence, but have subsequently determined that the crime did not take place, or was recorded in error.
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