THE HUMAN COST OF HATE
NEW FIGURES REVEAL HOW VICTIMS’ LIVES ARE BEING IMPACTED BY HATE CRIME - AS THE NUMBER OF INCIDENTS SOARS
HATE crimes are having a serious impact on victims’ lives in everything from work to relationships, the latest national crime survey has revealed.
More than half of victims (53%) say that hate crime has had an impact on their lives, according to the 2017-18 Crime Survey for England and Wales.
Nearly one in every three (31%) have suffered a financial loss because of an attack, while one in four (24%) say they now avoid social situations.
Other side effects that are less common but still happen fairly regularly are having to take time off work (13%), having a relationship breakdown (7%) and loss of employment altogether (5%).
The figures come at a time when the number of hate crimes being recorded by police has soared to the highest number on recent record.
There were 94,098 hate crimes recorded by police in England and Wales in 2017-18 - up from 80,393 in 2016-17, 62,518 in 2016-17, and more than twice as many as a low of 42,255 hate crimes in 2012-13.
The majority of these hate crimes committed were motivated by race, which was a factor in 71% of cases, while a further 12% were related to the victim’s sexual orientation.
Meanwhile, 8% of all hate crimes were based on religion, 7% per cent by disability, and 2% were transgender hate crimes.
More than half of the total were public order offences - which can include using threatening, abusive or insulting words or behaviour - while one in every three were violent crimes such as assault and harassment.
Criminal damage and arson also accounted for 6% of all hate crimes.
Diana Fawcett, Chief Officer at independent charity Victim Support said: “Hate crime is any attack on a person because of an aspect of their identity and it can have a particularly devastating impact on victims as it’s such