Romania

How hate crime data is collected

The Romanian Police records all criminal offences in a dedicated database. Romanian investigative police officers have a duty to highlight all aggravating circumstances when registering criminal files that are under investigation. However, there are no designated procedures for recording hate crimes by the police. A working group has been created at the level of the Romanian Police to determine necessary changes to the registration and investigation of hate crimes.

Prosecution files and court files include information about aggravating circumstances. This information is replicated and centralized in the judicial statistics application used by the Ministry of Justice. These data have been collected since 2014.

At the start of 2018, the authorities established a statistical data collection mechanism, which introduced two new forms through which additional data on hate crimes are collected. The new mechanism provides for monitoring the use of the aggravating circumstance found in article 77, letter "h", from the Criminal Code, and of the criminal offences under the Government Emergency Ordinance no. 31/2002, and allows for separate monitoring of all hate crimes in the judicial statistical system ECRIS. The change was made by Annex 19 to Order no. 298/2017 of the Prosecutor General of the Prosecutor's Office attached to the High Court of Cassation and Justice, and amended Order no. 213/2015 on the organization and functioning of the information system of the Public Ministry.