New UK hate crime figures, *sigh*

[davidgillon]

The new hate crime figures are out, apparently disability hate crime is slightly down. Am I being cynical in assuming that's probably because some of the haters are too busy committing hate crimes against muslims and/or jews and/or anyone who doesn't look like them?

Trans hate crime is also slightly down, but I'd presume that would be people feeling even less safe to report it, rather than an actual reduction.

The figures exclude the Met, the biggest force in the country because they're busy adopting a new crime reporting tool - so give us their figures as a separate entry, don't just exclude them entirely. *headdesk*

Somewhat embarrassingly for the police/Home Office, the Office for Statistics Regulation is still insisting they include a caveat to say their data is actually pretty crap.

What comes through when considering that the figures cover the period of the Stockport-related race riots is that the figures, even if recorded as intended, are utterly incapable of recording mass events like riots. If 300 people are chanting racist slogans and throwing bricks, but the police only arrest 3 of them, then only 3 crimes would be reported. It's definitely working as intended, but is working as intended what they actually intended?

Comments

[davidgillon]

Thinking about the Met being excluded from the figures, I realised that that one force represents about 15% of the population of England and Wales. Correct for that and the figures for disability hate crime should actually show a 6% increase, not an 8% fall. And someone I know who specialises in this stuff pointed out to me that if you exclude the Met figures, it massively underestimates anti-semitic hate crime because our Jewish community is concentrated in only a few places, the leading one being London.

[lokifan]

someone I know who specialises in this stuff pointed out to me that if you exclude the Met figures, it massively underestimates anti-semitic hate crime because our Jewish community is concentrated in only a few places, the leading one being London.

Yeah :((( My guess is that's also part of trans hate crime being down.

What comes through when considering that the figures cover the period of the Stockport-related race riots is that the figures, even if recorded as intended, are utterly incapable of recording mass events like riots. If 300 people are chanting racist slogans and throwing bricks, but the police only arrest 3 of them, then only 3 crimes would be reported. It's definitely working as intended, but is working as intended what they actually intended?

Very good point.