Disability Hate Crimes – 2020/21 and 2021/22

Response

Please see below a table showing all disability hate crimes and incidents recorded in the financial years 2020/21 and 2021/22.  Your questions have then been answered below in relation to disability hate crimes.

1. Please find attached an excel workbook containing the information you have requested.  The first tab contains a table showing the number of recorded disability-motivated hate crimes in each financial year requested.  This includes recorded crimes only – non-recordable occurrences have not been included here.   The information is then broken down by outcome, in answer to question 1.
2. We do not have any specialist disability liaison officers within our Organisation. However, all victims of hate crime in Avon and Somerset, including disability hate crime, will automatically have a Victim and Witness Care Officer allocated to their case to provide guidance and support. Offences motivated by hate have a devastating impact on the victim, their family and wider community and are always taken seriously by Avon and Somerset Police – including our role in minimising the impact of hate crimes and the criminal justice process upon victims.
3. Please see the second tab of the attached workbook, showing disability hate crimes broken down by local authority area and beat name for each financial year requested.
4. We do not have a specific category within our crime recording system to record occurrences that fall under the description of ‘mate crime’.  Such occurrences would be recorded, when identified, in line with the relevant offence reported – often, disability motivated hate crime.  This is made clear in our internal procedural guidance on hate crime, which sets out the need for officers to have an understanding of the term mate crime should a victim use it, and that such a report is likely to be a disability hate crime or incident which should be recorded and treated as such.
5. Please see the first tab of the attached excel workbook, containing a table breaking down disability-motivated hate crimes by recorded victim gender.
6. The next table on the first tab of the attached excel workbook contains a breakdown by rural/urban occurrence location as recorded on our system.  Please note that this information is taken from an occurrence address category within our system, which does not match the DEFRA postcode list for rural areas.  We also have a flag that could be applied for ‘rural crime’; none of these disability motivated crimes have the rural flag.
7. The final table of the first excel tab shows a breakdown by age group as requested.