Prosecution records consists of 296 prosecutorial decisions in Northern Ireland recorded using the definition applied by the Lawrence Inquiry which sets out 6 motivation types: racist incidents; homophobic incidents (sexual orientation); sectarian incidents; faith / religious incidents (non-sectarian); disability incidents; and transphobic incidents.
No figures on hate crime prosecution and sentencing from England and Wales, and on sentencing from Northern Ireland were submitted.
The data on hate crime cases for 2022 from Scotland were not available at the time of publishing ODIHR's 2022 Hate Crime Report.
Data on sentenced cases from Scotland were submitted after the launch of the 2022 Hate Crime Report and were added to this website in October 2024.
Sentenced cases comprise of 1,107 cases from Scotland. Sentenced data is taken from Criminal Proceedings in Scotland 2021-22 that covers the 2021-22 financial year and represents a count of people convicted with a hate crime aggravator against the main charge.
The disaggregated data below are only for England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, but not Scotland. A single hate crime may involve one or more hate motivations; therefore, the figures below do not add up to the above total.
In 2022, the Government asked the Law Commission to conduct a wide-ranging review into hate crime to explore whether current legislation could be made more effective, and if additional protected characteristics should be added to the hate crime legislation. The Law Commission's review examined the adequacy and parity of protection offered by the law relating to hate crime and the current range of offences and aggravating factors in sentencing.
In 2022, the UK Government continued to fund True Vision, an online hate crime reporting portal, designed so that victims of hate crime do not have to visit a police station to report. The UK Government also continued to fund the National Online Hate Crime Hub, which is a central capability designed to support individual local police forces in dealing with online hate crime. The Hub provides expert advice to police forces to support them in investigating these offences.
In February 2022, the UK Parliament voted against adding sex and gender to the list of protected characteristics covered by hate crime legislation. This followed the Law Commission - a statutory independent body that reviews laws and produces recommendations for their reform in England and Wales - recommending that sex or gender should not be added as a protected characteristic for the purposes of aggravated offences and enhanced sentencing. In its review of hate crime legislation published in 2021, the Law Commission found that adding sex or gender to hate crime laws may prove “more harmful than helpful” and “counterproductive”.
In 2022, the Online Safety Bill began its passage through Parliament. Hate crime is a “priority offence” in the Bill, which will become law in 2023. Under new legal duties of care, technology companies will need to prevent, identify and remove illegal content and activity online. This means less illegal content - including content that incites hate on the grounds of race, religion or sexual orientation - will appear online and, when it does, it will be removed more quickly.
Also in 2022, the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill became an Act of Parliament. It included a provision which enables the Home Secretary to issue a code of practice relating to the recording of personal data in non-crime hate incident records.
Scotland
In April 2022, the Scottish Government convened the Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group in order to provide a multi-agency and collaborative approach to the development of a new Hate Crime Strategy for Scotland, for publication in early 2023. Members have a range of expertise in tackling prejudice, building cohesive communities and advancing human rights.
Prior to the end of 2022, members of the Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group also commenced engagement with people who have lived experience of hate crime, to inform the strategy's commitments.
Hate crimes recorded in this category include 591 offences recorded in Northern Ireland and 82,086 offences recorded in England and Wales. The records for Northern Ireland include offences targeting any group defined by "race", colour, nationality or ethnic or national origin, and including anti-Roma hate offences.
Hate crimes recorded in this category include 33 offences in Northern Ireland and 5,250 offences in England and Wales. This category includes offences motivated by anti-Semitic, anti-Muslim, anti-Christian bias, bias against members of other religions and bias against people who hold no religious belief.
This category includes 329 offences (of which 290 were motivated by bias based on sexual orientation and 39 by transphobic bias) recorded in Northern Ireland and 20,840 (of which 17,834 were motivated by bias based on sexual orientation and 3,006 by transphobic bias) recorded in England and Wales.
This category includes 102 offences recorded in Northern Ireland and 8,564 offences recorded in England and Wales.
Records under this category were collected by the police in Northern Ireland and relate to "sectarian hate crime". In Northern Ireland, "sectarian hate crime" is defined as "bigoted dislike or hatred of members of a different religious or political group. It is broadly accepted that within the Northern Ireland context an individual or group must be perceived to be Catholic or Protestant, Nationalist or Unionist, or Loyalist or Republican. However, sectarianism can also relate to other religious denominations, for example, Sunni and Shi’ite in Islam."
ODIHR recognizes the United Kingdom's efforts to regularly report hate crime data to ODIHR and to address hate crime in a comprehensive manner. However, it observes that the United Kingdom would benefit from raising awareness among and building the capacity of criminal justice officials to address hate crime, particularly in respect of some of the more isolated victim groups.
ODIHR recalls that in Ministerial Council Decision 9/09, OSCE participating States committed to introducing or further developing professional training and capacity-building activities for law enforcement, prosecution and judicial officials dealing with hate crimes. ODIHR stands ready to support the United Kingdom in meeting the relevant commitments through its comprehensive resources and tailored capacity-building assistance for police, prosecution, and judiciary.
In addition to incidents submitted with detailed descriptions, this graph includes 1,621 anti-Semitic incidents reported as statistics by the Community Security Trust (CST).
🛈 Please note that the total number of incidents may be lower than the sum of incidents presented in the breakdown chart above, as some incidents involve multiple bias motivations.
🛈 ODIHR no longer presents descriptions of property attacks in the incident tables below. Data on property attacks are presented in the breakdown charts above. One property attack may target multiple properties or involve multiple types of attack.