Lithuania

Lithuania regularly reports hate crime data to ODIHR. Lithuania's Criminal Code contains a combination of general and specific penalty-enhancement provisions and a substantive offence. Data are collected by the Police Department under the Ministry of the Interior and the Prosecutor General's Office. Data are not made publicly available.

How hate crime data is collected

How hate crime data is collected

Criminal data are processed in the Departmental Register of Criminal Acts. The Register is administrated by the Ministry of the Interior. The data are provided by police officers and prosecutors when a pre-trial investigation begins or other decisions on criminal procedures are made. The judges provide data to the Register only in cases of private accusation, in which a pre-trial investigation is not carried out and a victim files a complaint and upholds an accusation in court.

There are two types of hate crimes described in the criminal code: substantive crimes with bias motivations (with specific sentencing enhancements for murder, health impairment, desecration of graves or other places of public respect, and incitement of violence); and all other crimes for which bias motivation is an aggravating circumstance that should be taken into account by the court in sentencing.

During the investigation of hate crime cases, officers entering information in the Register will mark a criminal act as likely motivated by race, nationality, religion, language, gender, descent, social status, convictions or views, sexual orientation, age and disability.

When a criminal case is referred to the court, the officer entering the decision in the Register will also indicate the bias motive of a criminal act if it has been investigated. In order to obtain the data on recorded and prosecuted hate crimes, a search of the Register, filtered by indicated motives and specific paragraphs of relevant articles of the criminal code is carried out. The data found are then reviewed to ensure accuracy.

In order to obtain the data on sentences for hate crimes, a search by a relevant criminal case number is carried out in the Register of Suspected, Accused and Convicted Persons for hate crimes referred to the court. The searches are done and the received data are reviewed by the Public Security and Migration Department of the Ministry of the Interior.

Statistics on the application of aggravating circumstance provisions in sentencing are not available at the moment. There is no special instruction or policy document that governs the hate crime data collection process. Only official statistics on crimes recorded as "Incitement against any National, Racial, Ethnic, Religious or Other Group of Persons", which are mostly cases of hate speech, are published on the Ministry of the Interior's website.

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SELECT YEAR

Official Data

Year Hate crimes recorded by police Prosecuted Sentenced About these data
2017 9 4 3
2016 20 6 7
2015 24 5 4
2014 0 0 0
2013 3 2 3

Hate crimes recorded by police

By bias motivation By type of crime
Download official data

National developments

The Lithuanian Human Rights Monitoring Institute published a study entitled "Protection of Hate Crime Victims' Rights: the case of Lithuania", which included recommendations for state authorities tasked with ensuring the compliance of Lithuanian laws with the EU Directive on Victims’ Rights.

Holy See information

  • The Holy See reported two cases of arson of church buildings and two cases of the desecration of cemeteries. Lithuanian authorities reported that police investigations did not reveal a bias motivation in any of these cases.

Key observation

ODIHR observes that Lithuania has not made public reliable data and statistics on hate crimes.

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