What is hate crime?
Hate crime is defined as any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person. (Macpherson, 1999) In 2009, the most commonly reported hate crime in London was racist crime (8,270 incidents), followed by homophobic crime (1,362 incidents) and faith crime (667 incidents).
In the four years ending March 2010, more than 48,400 defendants were prosecuted for crimes involving racist or religious crime (CPS, Hate crime and crimes against older people report, 2009-10)
Transformative Justice Forum
The desired aim of the forum is to ‘transform’ the way that statutory, public and private sector agencies and organisations work together in establishing and delivering appropriate and effective solutions for high victimisation level groups.
Yvette Williams, TJF Chair, 2008/9
The UK is amongst world leaders in the way that it responds to hate crime, but there is still much work to do. One of the greatest challenges is to reduce the under-reporting of hate crime.
Professor John Grieve CBE, independent chair of the government's Hate Crime Advisory Group