CPS heralds tougher sentencing for hate crime offenders

Courts in England and Wales are giving tougher sentences in over two-thirds or just over 67 per cent of hate crime cases prosecuted, far exceeding the 55 per cent target it set for 2017/18. 

The annual CPS hate crime report, published on October 16, shows that sentence uplifts have risen from 53.5 per cent in 2016/17. 

Chris Long, Chief Crown Prosecutor and CPS Hate Crime Champion, said that “the CPS is committed to robustly prosecuting these cases” and that being a hate crime victim is especially devastating due to the personal nature of the offences. 

“The continuing increase in the number of offenders who receive increased sentences is a testament to the work of the CPS in building the cases correctly and providing the courts with the information they need to sentence appropriately,” Mr Long said. 

The highest hate crime conviction rate by police force area, remembering that different regions have different demographic characteristics and total hate crime prosecution figures, is Wiltshire at 95.6 per cent, followed by Dyfed Powys on 94.2 per cent, while Suffolk achieved a 91.7 per cent conviction rate, closely followed by Dorset at 90.8 per cent and Hampshire and IOW on 90.6 per cent. 

The police force areas with the lowest hate crime conviction rate are London North at 78.3 per cent and London South at 78.2 per cent, followed by Gloucestershire with 79.5 per cent. 

There has also been a rise in convictions for most protected characteristics of hate crime referrals to the CPS, but a drop in the conviction rate for disability hate crime. 

For racially aggravated hate crime, the conviction rate increased from 84.0 per cent in 2016/17 to 85.4 per cent in 2017/18. 

And the religiously aggravated offences, the conviction rate rose from 80.6 per cent to 84.3 per cent. 

Convictions in homophobic and transphobic cases increased by two percentage points while the rate for offences against older people rose by 3.2 percentage points. 

However, the Disability hate crime conviction rate decreased from 79.3 per cent in 2016/17 to 75.0 per cent – a drop of 4.3 percentage points.  

Two force areas achieved conviction rates of 100 per cent for disability hate crimes – Northamptonshire and Derbyshire – but Cleveland had the lowest at 41.7 per cent. 

The number of non-convictions because of complainant issues dropped by nine percentage points in 2017/18 compared with the previous year (30.2 per cent to 27.4 per cent), which indicates that support for victims and witnesses is improving, the CPS suggested. 

These figures have been released in the middle of National Hate Crime Awareness Week, which runs until October 20.