The term ‘hate’ crime is a very complex and not easily self-defining term, with many disagreements over the use of the phrase to coin such crimes deemed to be fuelled by strong feelings of hatred based on the grounds of race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender identity. It is clear that hate crimes tend to be directed at minority groups in society. A selected example under discussion here is going to be racism. Also the way the Courts acknowledge and treat these hate crimes will be discussed.
Racism can be defined as attitudes and opinions of others which bring about a decision to treat certain individuals differently based on their ethnic origin. Those who are unfortunately subject to hate crime based on racism, are usually …show more content…
These statistics show an alarming race in hate crime which is clearly concerning, and may not even be the right statistic as many people are afraid to even report a hate crime incident, due to the lack of trust with the police, and for fearing their own safety. Also the records where collected by 44 police forces which could to be unrepresentative of the true statistic as it has been said that the police are reluctant to record a crime as aggregated by hate, also the under reporting may be due to police not believing the incident even occurred, and the fact that the police station is not easy to access leading to third party reporting systems being the only means to report such crimes effectively (Newburn …show more content…
According to research racist attacks against Muslims in the UK a week following the France attacks in 2015 rose by 300%, with the main targets being female Muslims wearing Islamic dresses and head scarfs (Staff 2015). These results show how hate crime is social as the France attacks lead to a worldwide discrimination against everyone else who follows that religion or appears to be from that same ethnic group who committed the tragedy, without other characteristics being taken into account. Racism is also apparent in the justice system, as even though black youths make up approximately 2.2% of the UK’s population, the sheer amount of stop and searches on this ethnic group by the police is disproportionate with 17.7% of all stop and searches in 2009/2010 being on this ethnic group (Fitzgerald 2013). This suggests that there is institutional racism within the police force and that these ethnic groups are discriminated against or it could be that the group is actually more involved in crime than any other group, however there is no evidence to support this. Even within prisons where prisoners are said to be treated equally and in the same way, the chief inspector of prisons not only found
Racism can be defined as attitudes and opinions of others which bring about a decision to treat certain individuals differently based on their ethnic origin. Those who are unfortunately subject to hate crime based on racism, are usually …show more content…
These statistics show an alarming race in hate crime which is clearly concerning, and may not even be the right statistic as many people are afraid to even report a hate crime incident, due to the lack of trust with the police, and for fearing their own safety. Also the records where collected by 44 police forces which could to be unrepresentative of the true statistic as it has been said that the police are reluctant to record a crime as aggregated by hate, also the under reporting may be due to police not believing the incident even occurred, and the fact that the police station is not easy to access leading to third party reporting systems being the only means to report such crimes effectively (Newburn …show more content…
According to research racist attacks against Muslims in the UK a week following the France attacks in 2015 rose by 300%, with the main targets being female Muslims wearing Islamic dresses and head scarfs (Staff 2015). These results show how hate crime is social as the France attacks lead to a worldwide discrimination against everyone else who follows that religion or appears to be from that same ethnic group who committed the tragedy, without other characteristics being taken into account. Racism is also apparent in the justice system, as even though black youths make up approximately 2.2% of the UK’s population, the sheer amount of stop and searches on this ethnic group by the police is disproportionate with 17.7% of all stop and searches in 2009/2010 being on this ethnic group (Fitzgerald 2013). This suggests that there is institutional racism within the police force and that these ethnic groups are discriminated against or it could be that the group is actually more involved in crime than any other group, however there is no evidence to support this. Even within prisons where prisoners are said to be treated equally and in the same way, the chief inspector of prisons not only found