Prosecution Hate Crime Policy and Practice

Dale SimonDirector of Equality and Diversity

Crown Prosecution Service

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Purpose of this presentation

• To give a brief summary of the CPS policies for the prosecution of homophobic and transphobic crime hate crime, racist and religiously aggravated crime, disability hate crime and crimes against older people.

• Provide an overview of the prosecution trends for each of the hate crime strands

• Discuss some of the on-going challenges for the CPS in prosecuting hate crime and highlight some of the opportunities for cross agency work

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Policy Date published Date refreshed

Racist and Religious Crime

2003 March 2008

Homophobic Crime 2002 Homophobic and Transphobic Crime, Nov 2007

Disability Hate Crime Feb 2007

Crimes against older people

July 2008

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Summary of the policies

• The CPS has put in place a number of public policy statements and guidance for prosecutors including Homophobic Crime (2002) refreshed in 2007 now Policy for Prosecuting Cases of Homophobic and Transphobic Crime; Racially and Religiously aggravated crime (2003) refreshed in 2008; Disability Hate Crime (2007) and Crimes against Older People (2008)

• In October 2009 the CPS also produced a series of leaflets on each of these strands aimed specifically at the groups affected by these crimes

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Summary of Policies Cont.

• All of these policies were informed by community engagement with specialist voluntary sector organisations and people directly affected by the policies

• Each of the public policy statements explains the relevant law, deals with the application of the Code for Crown Prosecutors, our approach to victim and witness issues, bail and sentencing and strand specific issues.

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Scrutiny of our policies

• We conduct a themed review of our policies after their first year of operation. The purpose of the review is to offer a drilled-down analysis of the factors affecting performance and to rate Areas on their performance in implementing the policy and guidance.

• The Hate Crime Scrutiny Panels include the CPS, community stakeholders, and an independent facilitator and legal adviser. They consider individual cases and consider what went well and not so well, and if there are any lessons to be learned for the future.

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Definition of Hate Crime

• The Police and the CPS have developed a joint definition of hate crime. “Hate crimes are defined as “any incident 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; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by a hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.

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Crimes Against Older People

• There is no statutory definition of a crime against an older person, and no general statutory offence. The CAOP flag applies to crimes:

• Where there is a relationship and an expectation of trust. E.g. assault/theft by a carer or family member;

• Which are specifically targeted at the old person because they are perceived as being vulnerable or an ‘easy target’. E.g., a distraction burglary or a mugging;

• Which are not initially related to the older person’s age but later do so. E.g., a burglary where the burglar does not know the age of the householder but later exploits the situation on discovering that the householder is an older person; and

• Which appear to be in part, or wholly motivated by hostility based on age, or perceived age. E.g., an assault, harassment or antisocial behaviour involving derogatory statements associated with the victim’s age.

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Crimes Against Older People Cont.

• The CPS recognises that crimes against older people take place in a context of a growing older population in which older people can experience negative and even prejudiced attitudes. CPS addresses the effective and successful prosecution of crimes against older people as an age equality issue

• CAOP is wider than hostility based crime; therefore we report on CAOP as part of our Violence Against Women (VAW) work, because the majority of older people are women and therefore more women are likely to be victims of these crimes and there can be an overlap with domestic violence - abuse by partners over decades or abuse by a family carer – within a pattern of power and control.

• Our first year figures on CAOP will be produced later this year as part of our VAW annual report, we are also in the process of conducting a themed review of our policy.

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Monitoring

• Hate crime indicator established April 05. There is a single target for unsuccessful outcomes of 18% applied to all current hate crime strands. Area performance across the hate crime strands is assessed every 6 months.

• The purpose of the assessment is to look at the outcome of our hate crime prosecutions, integrate equality and diversity into the CPS performance management arrangements and ensure that hate crimes are properly ‘flagged’, tracked, addressed and targeted

• Those Areas which are given a ‘red’ rating report back to headquarters with their plans for improvement.

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Hate Crime Figures

• The CPS have been reporting on hate crime performance in various forms since 2005

• December 2008: first annual hate crime report covering:• Volume, conviction rate, guilty plea rate, reasons

for unsuccessful outcomes, case studies, policy developments

• Our second annual report will be published in the next few weeks. Therefore the figures quoted in this presentation relate to 07/08

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Overall Hate Crime Prosecution Figures

2005 - 06 2006 - 07 2007 - 08

Volume % Volume % Volume %

Convictions 7,003 9,621 76.8 11,317 79.8

Unsuccessful 2,465 2,914 23.2 2,869 20.2

Total 9,468   12,535   14,186  

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Hate Crime volumes by strand

2005 - 06 2006 - 07 2007 - 08

Volume % Volume % Volume %

Race & Religious 8,868 93.7 11,713 93.4 13,008 91.7

Homophobic 600 6.3 822 6.6 995 7.0

Disability Hate Crime

0 0.0 0 0.0 183 1.3

Total 9,468   12,535   14,186  

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Comment on overall figures

• Increase in real terms in the number of hate crime prosecutions and the rate of successful outcomes

• However, the breakdown of the figures reveal that the vast majority of hate crime over 90% relates to RARA, but the number of prosecutions under each strand is growing year on year

• More work needed to increase the identification and reporting of homophobic, transgender and disability hate crime in particular.

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Overall Unsuccessful outcomes

Strand 2005 - 06 2006 - 07 2007 - 08

Vol % Vol % Vol %

Victim Issues 368 14.9 570 19.6 632 22.0

Essential Legal Element Missing

419 17.0 382 13.1 328 11.4

Total 2,465   2,914   2,869  

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Unsuccessful Outcomes by strands 2007-08

Strand Victim Issues Missing Legal Element

Vol % Vol %

Race and Religion 586 22.5% 295 11.3%

Homophobic / Transgender

37 17.1% 32 14.7%

Disability 9 21.4% 1 2.4%

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Comment on Trends

• The two largest categories of unsuccessful outcomes relate to victim issues and missing legal elements.

• Victim issues consist of victim retraction, non- attendance at trial and victim evidence that does not support the charge.

• Essential missing legal element suggests a possible error on review

• No significant differences across the strands in relation to the number of unsuccessful outcomes but the challenges for the CPS vary across the

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Challenges

• Identifying hate crime at the earliest stage so that hate crime policies can be applied. This is particularly the case in disability hate crime. Society and criminal justice agencies still struggle to recognise that people are targets of hostility on disability. It seems, for some, that to view disabled people as ‘hated’ as opposed to ‘easy targets’ or ‘vulnerable’ is counter-intuitive: surely no one ‘hates’ disabled people?

• Raising confidence in communities to report Hate Crime, the figures suggest a general upward trend in the number of hate crime but the message from community representatives suggests still a high degree of under reporting across the strands.

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Challenges continued 1

• More broadly there are also fundamental issues of access to justice for disabled people. Issues such as how we support people to give their most credible and most reliable evidence in the adversarial system that we have, and how we deal with the knotty problem of balancing the right to privacy when it comes to psychiatric records and our disclosure duties which are fundamental to the right to a fair trial.

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Challenges continued 2

• Homophobic and transphobic- fears of being ‘outed’ lead to challenges for prosecution. CPS can only go so far in guaranteeing ‘anonymity’ and while we might be able to get press anonymity and screens etc, it will be very unlikely that we could get full witness anonymity and we need to manage expectations about this.

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Cross agency work

• Courts on sentencing• Police on the early identification of cases work with

WCU• Local authorities development of our community

prosecutor approach more work needed locally to ensure that Local Authorities particularly housing departments and associations are aware of prosecutions for hate crime so that they can use their powers

• Closer links with social services and care homes in the identification/reporting of hate crime and CAOP.