Hate crime figures in England and Wales has increased by 17% according to a new study by the UK Government. (Source 1)
The latest figures show that there were 94,098 hate crime offenses, or 0.16% of the population of England and Wales. The list as broken down is below:
71,251 (76%) race hate crimes
11,638 (12%) sexual orientation hate crimes
8,336 (9%) religious hate crimes
7,226 (8%) disability hate crimes
1,651 (2%) transgender hate crimes
The government says the increase is thought to be largely driven by improvements in police recording, but also said the spikes in hate crime followed certain events such as the EU Referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017.
In Scotland, the number has decreased by 0.4% for the same time period (Source 2) with a total figure of 5,336, or a 0.1% of the population. The Scottish list is as below:
3,249 (60.8%) race hate crimes
1,112 (20.8%) sexual orientation hate crimes
642 (12%) religious hate crimes
284 (5.3%) disability hate crimes
49 (1.1%) transgender hate crimes
To get a scale of the problem in England and Wales versus Scotland, Scotland would need to have an offense record of 8,400 or an increase of 57.4%. This would put Scotland and England on equal terms of a population proportion of hate crime.
The media though would have you believe that the above 94,000 was a UK wide figure. The image in this blog post is the screen grab that is on the breaking news app on my phone as of 6 minutes ago!
It’s not Scotland that has the problem of racism. Its England and Wales.
Sources
MacAlba 