Disability Hate Crime Network describes statistics on increased crime against disabled people as “misleading”

The Disability Hate Crime Network (DHCN) has responded to media reports, including in SLN, that Scotland has seen a 20 per cent increase in hate crimes against people with disabilities since 2013/14.

Stephen Brookes MBE co-ordinator of the DHCN said in a letter to the Society of Editors that the presentation of statistics to suggest a great increase in hate crimes against the disabled is “misleading” and added that it “is actually causing some fear among certain groups of disabled people that they will be a victim of rising numbers of crimes, and is even deterring some people from performing normal activities.”

He argued that, in fact, “overall incidences of disability hate crime has – according to a report by the Equality and Human Rights Commission remained stable year on year since 2007 (at an estimated 72000 per year for England, Scotland and Wales combined).”

What is being reported as an increase, Mr Brookes noted, is actually a rise in reports of such crimes to the police.

The real issue, he said, is the fact that of the estimated 72,000 incidents that occur every year, about 97 per cent are not reported to police or recorded by them or other agencies.

Mr Brookes added: “The numbers of crimes reported to and recorded by the police and other agencies has risen, as have the number of prosecutions, since they first began to be recorded in 2007.

“This is due to awareness in disabled people of the importance of reporting DHC and while still a trickle, it is an upward figure.

“Misreporting of the increase is not just dangerous and damaging, it actually promotes unnecessary fear of personal crime, and in some cases allows institutions to pass off their failure to engage more substantially in our work as using the figures to ‘demonstrate’ a ‘broken society’.”