Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2024

Product Description

This statistical bulletin provides information on the number of hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024.

Police forces have made significant improvements since 2014 in how they record crime. They have also improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime. Because of these changes, police recorded crime figures do not provide reliable trends in hate crime since 2014. Figures from the police should also not be seen as a good measure of prevalence since not all hate crime is reported to them. The figures do, however, provide a good measure of the hate crime-related demand on the police.

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.’ This common definition was agreed in 2007 by the police, Crown Prosecution Service, Prison Service (now the National Offender Management Service) and other agencies that make up the Criminal Justice System.