James Burnham District Crown Prosecutor Hate Crime Many victims do not feel hated by the offender and some feel that the use of the phrase about their case only makes them feel worse about the incident as it imports a further level of animosity towards them that they did not feel at the time o ID: 483474
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Slide1
Crown Prosecution Service – Response to Hate Crime
James Burnham, District Crown ProsecutorSlide2
Hate Crime??
Many victims do not feel hated by the offender and some feel that the use of the phrase about their case only makes them feel worse about the incident as it imports a further level of animosity towards them that they did not feel at the time of the
incident
The word ‘hatred’ does not appear in any recent or frequently used legislation
.Slide3
Various Types of Hate Crime
Race
Religious
Homophobic
Trans Gender
DisabilitySlide4
What do we have to prove?
The offence was motivated by hostility to the victim because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, change of gender or disability, or
The offender demonstrated hostility to the victim based on
their race, religion, sexual orientation, change of gender or
disability or the offender’s perception of those characteristics.Slide5
Hostility?
hostility falls well short of hatred. It is not defined in the
legislation
but the dictionary definition would include
:
ill-will, ill-feeling, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment, and dislike.Slide6
Hostility and Vulnerability –
the
distinction.
A simple example of the distinction would be where a victim, who is a wheel chair user, has her handbag stolen which had been hanging on the back of her chair. This case is unlikely to be motivated by hostility towards the disability, but the disability has made the victim more vulnerable to this sort of crime.
the type of offence sometimes known as ‘mate crime’ where a disabled person is befriended by the offender because they are an easy target for offences such as theft or fraud is unlikely to be a crime where hostility to a disabled person can be proved
.
However, in both these examples the court will take into account the vulnerability of the victim when considering sentence in any event.Slide7
Recording / Reporting
The ACPO definition is:
any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on a personal characteristic
this does not fit in with what we have to prove, but in all these cases the police should flag the case as a ‘hate crime’ and we will flag the case on our system in the same way.
In 2011 to 2012, there were 43,748 crimes recorded by police as hate
crimes of these:
race - 82%
sexual orientation - 10%
religion - 4%
disability - 4%
transgender identity - 1
%.Slide8
Wessex Caseload 2013
68 homophobic and transphobic
cases
(1127
cases
in England and Wales)
18 disability hate crime
cases
(573
cases in England and Wales
)
In the same period
in Wessex we
prosecuted 520 racial and religiously aggravated cases. Slide9
Special measures
A
range of special measures are available to ensure that victims can give ‘best evidence
’.
The appointment
of an
intermediary
A
ids
to
communication
The
court can order that the public are excluded from the court
room
Or it
can prohibit publication of anything leading to identification of the victim’s name or address under Section 46 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999
.
Screens
video linksSlide10
On line Crime
offences committed using social network sites such as Facebook and twitter are now covered by a CPS policy
document
Communications sent via social media are capable of amounting to criminal offences and prosecutors should
distinguish
between:
1 Communications
which may constitute
credible threats
of violence to the person or damage to
property or
2
Communications which
specifically target an individual or individuals
and which may constitute harassment or stalking within the meaning of the Protection from Harassment Act
1997
3 Communications
which may amount to a
breach of a court order
.
4 Communications
which do not fall into any of the categories above and fall to be considered separately (see below): i.e. those which may be considered
grossly offensive, indecent, obscene or
false which
will be subject to a
high threshold
and in many cases a prosecution is
unlikely
to be in the public interest.