Hate Crime

Hate crime is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.’ There are five monitored strands of hate crime: 

• race or ethnicity;
• religion or beliefs;
• sexual orientation;
• disability; and
• transgender identity.

Hate crimes are a subset of notifiable crimes that are recorded by the police and make up around two per cent of such crimes. In the process of recording a crime, police can flag an offence as being motivated by one or more of the five strands (for example, an offence can be motivated by hostility towards the victim’s race and religion).

Somerset Police data

The total number of Hate Crimes recorded by the police in Somerset between 2015-2019 was roughly 2900; which represents 2% of the total recorded crime during this period.

As seen nationally, there has been upward trend in the numbers of Hate Crimes recorded. The overall counts of reported Hate Crime increased from 350 cases in 2015 to 707 cases in 2019; an increase of 357 cases. This indicates a rise in over double the total number of cases during the 5-year period.  In terms of the proportion of total crime in Somerset, this reflects a significant increase of 0.4% as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: Proportion of all Somerset police recorded crime that was Hate Crime.

The recorded motivators for each crime match the trends seen by the national police data, with racially motivated crime making up just over half all Hate Crime, followed by sexual orientation as a motivator at 11%, religion as a motivator at 10% and disability as a motivator at 8%. These can be seen in Figure 2. The distribution of these motivators has not changed significantly between 2015 and 2019.

Figure 2:  Proportion of total Hate Crime recorded by Somerset police listed with each motivator as a cause.

The police record the location of each crime to the Beat area they work in. Mapping the locations of Hate Crime to the Beat areas shows us most of the crime occurs in urban areas; with the highest number of Hate Crimes between 2015 and 2019 being recorded in Yeovil and Taunton. This can be seen in Figure 3.

Figure 3: Police recorded Hate Crime within Somerset between 2015 and 2019

Somerset Service Data

Stand Against Racism and Inequality (SARI) is a service user/community-oriented agency that provides support and advice to victims of hate. They are based in Bristol but have been providing support for victims of Hate Crime in Somerset for the last 5 years. In Somerset they work in partnership with Compass Disability Services, Diversity Trust and the Citizens Advice Bureaus (CABs).

SARI had a total of 165 referrals from Somerset between Apr 2016 and March 2019; the yearly counts are shown in Table 1. The yearly figures were consistent during this time period with the rate per 100,000 people staying within a range of 9 to 11. The annual rate trends can be seen in Figure 9.

Table 1: Number of referrals in Somerset to SARI over the past financial three years.

Figure 4: Number of recorded Hate Crimes in Somerset by SARI as a rate per 100,000 people.

For each Hate Crime recorded by SARI a motivator was listed. At roughly 60% of all crimes, race was significantly more likely to be listed as a motivator than any other characteristic. This was followed by disability at roughly 20% and Sexual Orientation and Transgender both at roughly 8%. These can be seen in Figure 10. There has been no significant change in the proportion of the different motivators recorded between 2016/17 and 2018/19.

Figure 5:  Proportion of total Hate Crime recorded by SARI listed with each motivator as a cause.

Mapping the locations of the SARI recorded Hate Crime allows us to identify areas where most of the crime occurs. The rates per 100,000 people per district can be seen in Table 2 and a map of hotspots can be seen in Figure 11.  The hotspots are the Census 2011 Middle Layer Super Output Areas (MSOAs) with top ten percent of Hate Crime cases. These locations appear to map closely to the larger towns within Somerset.

 Table 2: Hate Crime per district as a rate per 100,000 people.

Figure 6: Hate Crime Hotspots based on the MSOAs with the top 10% of recorded Hate Crime by SARI

Further information:

• Hate crimes and hate incidents reporting (Somerset County Council)
• Hate Crime statistics, England & Wales (Home Office)