Hate Crime

This statistical bulletin provides information on the number of hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in year ending March 2022. Police forces have made significant improvements in how they record crime since 2014. They have also improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime. Because of these changes, police recorded crime figures do not currently provide reliable trends in hate crime. 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.

There are five centrally monitored strands of hate crime:

• race or ethnicity
• religion or beliefs
• sexual orientation
• disability, and
• transgender identity