Working to tackle racist and religious hate crime
Strategic Partnership Against Hate Crime Bristol
On 9 January 2012 Jane Gibney joined representatives from Bristol Council; the police; Educational Action Challenging Homophobia (EACH); Support Against Racist Incidents (SARI); Disability Incidents and others to review strategic work across Avon and Somerset to prevent or prosecute hate crime. Reporting and dealing with Disability Hate Crime remains a priority and partners heard that training of PCSOs on this had been completed and that PCSOs are now visiting a number of day and residential centres working with disabled people to spread awareness.
SARI Support Against Racist Incidents in Bristol
On the evening of 12 October 2011, Jane Gibney joined police, local authority staff from housing and education, members of the public and service users at the SARI (Support Against Racist Incidents) AGM. SARI holds its main meetings most years to coincide with Black History month (October!) Service users and partners evaluated the work of SARI and patterns of hate crime over the year. We celebrated 20 years of SARI's work. While we would rather that there were no need for the advocacy, education and case work undertaken by SARI, there is a need for the support they offer to victims of all kinds of racist hate crime or bullying. We were able to highlight the work of the LSIP and SARI's role in this with partners and participants.
Unity Cornwall Racist issues and reporting
At our November 2011 Local Scrutiny and Involvement Panel, members asked us to look into the apparent dip in successful prosecutions of race (and disability) hate crimes. As a result, Jane Gibney has been liaising with partners in Devon and Cornwall to understand trends, issues and comparative performance data. Victor Downer from Unity Cornwall (a support and advocacy group for race hate incidents), explained to Jane : "one of the reasons for under-reporting to police is that until recently at least, people seem to have been made to feel they shouldn't have reported the incident they make a complaint about, especially where it relates to incidents on housing estates. Housing Associations locally are being helpful and proactive however - where it would seem police have refused to get involved."
Unity Cornwall has seen a steep rise in casework, more faith-based incidents and an apparent case of arson as well as incidents involving young people causing damage in shops owned by Asian people.
Other issues lying behind attrition rates may relate to file quality from the police or in some instances, aspects of our charging decisions or action planning for police colleagues. Jane Gibney, Senior District Crown Prosecutor and hate crime specialist Sian Sullivan and Performance Manager Simon Gregory will continue to work with colleagues to understand the issues. Hopefully we can report higher conviction rates again in the months to come!
Tackling hate crime in with our partners in Bristol
Did you know that Bristol has one of the fastest-changing demographics outside of London? The make-up of our communities changes more rapidly than the Census or other local data monitoring systems can keep up with!
The changing and growing numbers of different communities can impact on tensions in some communities in the city particularly in Hartcliffe, Lockleaze and Southmead where there are also high levels of existing anti-social behaviour.
On 16 February 2011, local Housing Officers, police community officers as well as Hate Crime police specialists; PCSOs and other council workers came together to look at our practices when dealing with hate crime incidents. The aim was to share understanding of hot spots; ensure each agency was more familiar with each others processes and to begin to work together even better.
Jane Gibney represented the CPS and reports back: "We agreed on the importance of Housing Officers sharing evidence of incidents with police at an early stage, particularly where there was a history of harassment or ASB with the hate crime incidents. We know from the Fiona Pilkington case, for example, that a long history of targeted ASB and hate crime are closely linked. We have also seen this through our Hate Crime Scrutiny Panel."
She went on "I was surprised to discover that seasoned housing officials thought the CPS 'public interest' test centred on cost alone and they had thought we decided whether tot take forward hate crime cases on this basis! One of the outcomes of the day for me was to help the group I worked with understand why hate crime was very much considered a public interest issue by the CPS!"
