Disability hate crime

Prejudice against people with disabilities is a belief that people with physical or mental impairments are inferior. People with disabilities face significant physical and social barriers to full participation in society. Lack of access to public transport and other basic services are common experiences, as well as entrenched prejudices that affect chances for employment, friendships and a full family life. Hate crimes against people with disabilities are often characterized by low level crime committed by people known to the victim such as petty theft or damage to mobility aids, escalating to very serious attacks involving torture and even murder.

A limited but growing number of governments provide official data on hate crime against people with disabilities. NGOs also report information on incidents motivated by bias against people with disabilities, as well as against homeless people. There is a low awareness of disability hate crime, and knowledge about how to monitor incidents motivated by hostility against people with disabilities among civil society organizations and the general public. As a result the data in this section is sparse.

TANDIS

Reports

Overview of incidents reported by civil society

Attacks Against People Attacks Against Property Total
Violent Attacks Threats
15 1 2 18

International Reports

France

In its fifth report on France, the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) recommended amendments to the Criminal Code to include racist, homophobic and transphobic motivations as aggravating circumstances in criminal offences. ECRI also recommended that the authorities establish partnerships with civil society organizations working with Roma communities and people with disabilities to overcome under-reporting and to ensure that hate crime data-collection systems allow the disaggregation of data and the tracking of cases through the criminal justice system.

OSCE Region

The Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) passed a number of resolutions on hate crime issues, including Resolution 2069 on recognizing and preventing neo-racism, which recommends that hate crime legislation include the protected characteristics of race, colour, ethnicity, language, religion, disability, migrant status, sex, sexual orientation and gender identity. PACE also recognized the issue of under-reporting by calling for more systematic reporting of hate crimes.

The European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights' (FRA) report, "Equal protection for all victims of hate crime: the case of people with disabilities", calls for the introduction of enhanced penalties for disability hate crimes; a statutory duty on national authorities to collect and publish disaggregated hate crime data, supplemented by victimization surveys; the effective investigation and prosecution of hate crimes against people with disabilities; and the provision of accessible victim support services.