Online abuse to be treated as hate crime
REPORTS of hate crimes are expected to soar after the Crown Prosecution Service announced online offences will be treated as seriously as offences committed in person for the first time.
People are being encouraged to report abuse received online and have been guaranteed that it will be taken as seriously as if they had been confronted in the street.
The CPS has changed its guidance in light of an increasing number of reports of hate crime, which has also been shown to spike after terror events. MPS and campaigners welcomed the move but called on social media companies to do more to remove abusive content quickly.
The revised documents, which provide guidance to criminal prosecutors once police have investigated and prepared a case, cover different strands of hate crime: racist and religious; disability; and homophobic, biphobic and transphobic.
Convictions are already increasing, up from 11.8 per cent in 2014-15 to 33.8 per cent in 2015-16, but the CPS expects a further rise following the launch of a new online campaign aimed at encouraging victims to come forward.
The CPS also warned of the need to punish people who “amplify or disseminate” hate crime online, suggesting those who retweet or repost hatred could also be prosecuted in future.
Alison Saunders, the director of public prosecutions, said: “Hate crime has a corrosive effect on our society and that is why it is a priority area for the CPS. It can affect entire communities, forcing people to change their way
of life and live in fear. These documents take account of the current breadth and context of offending to provide prosecutors with the best possible chance of achieving justice.”
“I hope that, along with this week’s campaign, they will give people the confidence to come forward and report hate crime in the knowledge that they will be taken seriously and given the support they need.”
Hate crimes can be perpetrated “online or offline or a pattern of behaviour including both. The internet and social media in particular have provided new platforms for offending behaviour.”
The authorities’ response to hate crime has come under close scrutiny in the last year amid jumps in the number of incidents.
There was a surge in reports following the EU referendum in June 2016, while figures released earlier this month show forces registered a spike around the terrorist attacks that hit the UK earlier this year. MPS have called for social media companies to do more to tackle the rise in hateful comments online. Many are not removed because they do not break community guidelines issued by sites.
Nus Ghani MP, a Home Office aide, said: “It is important that hate crime online is taken as seriously as offline. It’s good to see the CPS making this change but we need to see social media companies do more to remove hate crime and abusive content.
“They need to do more to look at what they take down, when and what their community guidelines are, so people know they are taken seriously.”
Another MP, who has suffered abuse, said that while the change would help victims, police should be given the resources to properly investigate hate crimes in order to reassure victims that they will be taken seriously.
In 2015-16 the CPS completed a record 15,442 hate crime prosecutions while the conviction rate increased from 82.9 per cent in 2014-15 to 83.2 per cent in 2015-16.