An overview of hate crime in England and Wales
Source: data.gov.uk (2014-11-19)

This report brings together, for the first time, a range of official statistics on hate crime in England and Wales  from across the crime and criminal justice system.  It is the third  in a series of  cross-departmental reports collating information from the Office for National

December 2013		
	
	
	
Home Office, Office for National Statistics 
and Ministry of Justice
An Overview of Hate Crime 
in England and Wales

Contents 
Page 
Executive summary ............................................................................................................................... 6 
 
Introduction    ...................................................................................................................................... 10 
Definition of hate crime ................................................................................................. 11 
Coverage of report........................................................................................................ 11 
List of figures  ........................................................................................................................................ 4 
List of tables  ........................................................................................................................................ 5 
 
Hate crime: Victimisation to police recording................................................................................... 12 
Crime Survey for England and Wales .......................................................................... 12 
Overall hate crime ........................................................................................................ 12 
Victimisation by personal and household characteristics ............................................. 15 
Repeat victimisation ..................................................................................................... 16 
Reporting hate crime .................................................................................................... 17 
Police recorded hate crime offences ............................................................................ 18 
Hate crimes by type of offence ..................................................................................... 19 
Understanding differences between the CSEW and police recorded crime ................ 21 
Hate crime by motivating factor ......................................................................................................... 23 
Racially motivated hate crime ...................................................................................... 23 
Racist incidents ............................................................................................................ 24 
Religiously motivated hate crime .................................................................................. 25 
Sexual orientation motivated hate crime ...................................................................... 25 
Disability motivated hate crime ..................................................................................... 26 
Gender-identity motivated hate crime .......................................................................... 27 
 
 
2

Racially or religiously aggravated offences: Police recording to court outcome......................... 28 
Racially or religiously aggravated police recorded offences ........................................ 29 
Police detections .......................................................................................................... 30 
Types of detections ...................................................................................................... 32 
Further information on police cautions ......................................................................... 32 
Proceedings at magistrates’ courts .............................................................................. 34 
Offenders convicted at all courts .................................................................................. 36 
Notes on comparison of police recorded crimes through to convictions in court ......... 38 
Sentencing .................................................................................................................... 39 
Average custodial sentence length .............................................................................. 41 
Additional information from the Crown Court Sentencing Survey  ................................................ 43 
Additional information from the CSEW ............................................................................................. 45 
Victim satisfaction with the police ................................................................................. 45 
Effects of hate crime ..................................................................................................... 46 
Worry about being a victim of crime ............................................................................. 47 
Data sources  ...................................................................................................................................... 48 
Symbols and other conventions ........................................................................................................ 54 
Links to other resources  .................................................................................................................... 55 
Contacts 
 ...................................................................................................................................... 57 
 
 
 
 
3

List of figures 
 
Figure A 
Flow of racial or religiously motivated hate crime from victimisation to conviction  
Figure 1 
Number of estimated incidents of hate crimes with confidence intervals, 2011/12 and 
2012/13 CSEW  
Figure 2 
Percentage of victims who were victimised more than once in the previous year, 
2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW  
Figure 3 
Percentage of personal incidents that were identified as a hate crime by type of 
personal incident  
Figure 4 
Proportion of hate crimes by recorded offence type, 17 police forces, England and 
Wales 2012/13 
Figure 5 
Proportion of hate crimes by each strand, CSEW (2011/12 and 2012/13) and police 
recorded crime (2012/13) 
Figure 6 
Number of racist incidents, England and Wales, 2009/10 to 2012/13 
Figure 7 
Racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police, by type of 
offence, 2012/13 
Figure 8 
Indexed trends for racially or religiously aggravated offences and their corresponding 
non-aggravated offences 
Figure 9 
Proportion of offences for racially or religiously aggravated offences and their 
corresponding non-aggravated offences, 2012/13 
Figure 10 
Detection rates for racially or religiously aggravated offences and their 
corresponding non-aggravated offences, 2012/13 
Figure 11 
Offenders cautioned for racially or religiously aggravated offences, by offence type, 
2002 to 2012 
Figure 12 
Defendants proceeded against for racially or religiously aggravated offences and 
corresponding non-aggravated offences, 2002 to 2012 
Figure 13 
Defendants proceeded against for racially or religiously aggravated offences, by 
offence type, 2002 to 2012 
Figure 14 
Proceedings and convictions for racially or religiously aggravated offences and 
corresponding non-aggravated offences, with conviction ratio, 2002 to 2012 
Figure 15 
Offenders sentenced at all courts for racially or religiously aggravated causing public 
fear, alarm or distress offences, by sentence outcome, 2002 to 2012 
Figure 16 
Offenders sentenced at all courts for racially or religiously aggravated assault 
without injury offences, by sentence outcome, 2002 to 2012 
Figure 17 
Average custodial sentence length (in months) for racially or religiously aggravated 
offences and corresponding non-aggravated offences, 2012 
Figure 18 
Victim satisfaction with the police, 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW 
Figure 19  
Emotional impact of hate crime incident, 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW 
 
4

List of tables 
 
Table 1 
Percentage of hate crime incidents, by type of offence, 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW 
Table 2 
Percentage of CSEW hate crime incidents that came to the attention of the police 
Table 3 
Hate crimes recorded by the police, by monitored strand, 2011/12 and 2012/13 
Table 4 
Proportion of offenders sentenced at the Crown Court for assault offences which 
were not classified as racially or religiously aggravated by statute but deemed to be 
motivated by hatred, by monitored strand, 2012 
 
Additional Appendix Tables accompanying this publication are available at: 
www.gov.uk/government/publications/an-overview-of-hate-crime-in-england-and-wales 
 
 
5

Executive summary 
 
There are two main official sources for the number of hate crime offences in England and 
Wales: the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) and police recorded crime. The 
survey estimate is the higher of the two – some of the crimes reported in the survey will not 
come to the attention of the police. While the CSEW provides estimates of the volume of 
hate crime incidents, because of the small numbers of hate crime victims captured by the 
survey there are large margins of error around these estimates. These figures do, however, 
help to provide a broader context in which to view hate crime data from other sources. 
 
Based on combined data from the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW, there were an estimated 
278,000 hate crimes on average per year for the five monitored strands.1
 
 The most 
commonly reported motivating factor in these hate crime incidents was race, with an 
average of 154,000 incidents a year according to the 2011/12 and 2012/13 surveys. The 
second most common motivating factor was religion (70,000 incidents per year). The 
majority of hate crime incidents were accounted for by incidents of assault (with minor injury 
or no injury) and incidents of vandalism, which together made up around two-thirds of the 
CSEW hate crime estimate. 
The combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW estimated that 40 per cent of hate crimes came 
to the attention of the police, a similar level to overall CSEW crime. However, the level of 
reporting to the police for hate crimes has fallen from 51 per cent in the combined 2007/08 
and 2008/09 surveys. This fall is likely to be in at least part due to a change in the profile of 
hate crime offences experienced, away from more serious offences (such as robbery) to less 
serious offences (such as assault without injury). These less serious offences tend to have a 
lower reporting rate.  
 
The most common reason for not reporting the incident to the police was because the victim 
believed that the police would not or could not do much about it (43% of hate crime incidents 
in the CSEW that were not reported).  
 
In the process of recording a crime, the police can ‘flag’ an offence as being motivated by 
one or more of the five centrally monitored strands. The police recorded 42,236 hate crime 
offences in 2012/13, around one per cent of all recorded crime. Comparing this with 
estimates from the CSEW implies that far fewer hate crime offences came to the attention of 
the police than the 40 per cent indicated by the survey. There are a number of possible 
reasons to explain this discrepancy; for example, that the victim may not have mentioned the 
motivating factor when they reported the incident to the police. Comparisons between the 
CSEW hate crime estimates and the police recorded crime figures are explored in more 
detail in the main report. 
 
1 The five monitored strands are: race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and gender-identity. See the 
Introduction of this report for more information. 
6

Similar to findings from the CSEW, the most common motivating factor in hate crimes 
recorded by the police (85%) was race, with 35,885 offences recorded in 2012/13. The 
second most common factor was sexual orientation (10%), with 4,267 offences.  
 
Analysis from a subset of police forces in England and Wales shows that around a half of all 
police recorded hate crime is for public fear, alarm or distress, an offence which generally 
does not include crimes where physical violence is used or attempted against a victim 
(although may include some offences where injury is threatened). This is notably different 
from the CSEW, which, as a victimisation survey, will not identify crimes where there has not 
been a direct victim.  
 
More detailed information across the crime and criminal justice system (CJS) is available for 
racially or religiously aggravated offences as defined by statute, a subset of total police 
recorded hate crime. Figure A shows the level of these offences at various stages of the 
CJS. Recording and prosecution of these offences allow the police and courts increased 
powers to deal with individuals committing certain crimes motivated by hate towards either 
race or religion. Over 80 per cent of the racially or religiously motivated hate crimes recorded 
by the police in 2012/13 are for these specific aggravated offences.  
 
In 2012/13, the police recorded 30,234 racially or religiously aggravated offences. Public 
fear, alarm or distress offences accounted for around two-thirds of these offences. The 
number of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police has fallen by 24 
per cent over the last five years. In comparison, there was a 38 per cent fall in the 
corresponding offences that were not recorded as racially or religiously aggravated.  
 
The police detected2
 
 46 per cent of these racially or religiously aggravated offences in 
2012/13.The detection rates for racially or religiously aggravated offences of assault (with 
and without injury) and criminal damage were higher than for the corresponding non-
aggravated offences. In contrast, the detection rate for racially or religiously aggravated 
public fear, alarm or distress was lower than for the non-aggravated equivalent.  
In 2012, there were around 1,000 offenders cautioned after they admitted committing a 
racially or religiously aggravated offence, with numbers declining by 60 per cent over the 
past five years. The most common offence for which a caution was given was causing public 
fear, alarm or distress accounting for around three-quarters of cautions issued. 
 
2 The detection rate is the number of crimes that the police detect in a given year as a proportion of the total 
number of crimes recorded in the same period. However, in practice some crimes are detected in a different year 
to the year that the police recorded the crime. 
7

Figure A – Flow of racially or religiously motivated hate crime from victimisation to conviction
Case flow through system
CSEW
(2011/12 to 
2012/13)
Estimated 
number of hate 
crime incidents
278,000
per year
Racially or 
religiously 
motivated hate 
crime:
185,000
POLICE
RECORDED 
CRIMES
(2012/13)
Total number of 
hate crimes
42,236
Racially or 
religiously 
aggravated 
offences:
30,234
DETECTIONS
(2012/13)
Racially or 
religiously 
aggravated 
offences:
13,768
COURTS
PROCEEDINGS
(2012)
Racially or religiously 
aggravated offences:
8,898
PERSONS
CONVICTIONS
(2012)
Racially or religiously 
aggravated offences:
6,458
PERSONS
The Crime Survey for England and Wales   
(CSEW) provides an estimate for the number  
of hate crimes per year.  The 
majority of these crimes are racially     
motivated. Not all of these hate  
crimes will come to the  
attention of the police, so the 
number of offences 
recorded by the 
police is lower 
than in the 
CSEW. 
The combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 
CSEW estimates that 40% of hate 
crime offences came to the attention 
of the police. 
For certain offences, the police can 
record an offence as racially or 
religiously motivated. These offences 
are assault (with and without injury), 
harassment, public fear, alarm and 
distress and criminal damage.  
Around 80% to 85% of racially or 
religiously motivated hate
crime is for these select groups 
of offences. 
For these offences, information is
also available on the number of
cases that the police detect. In
2012/13, the police detected 46%
of
racially
or
religiously
aggravated hate crimes. Of these
detected
crimes,
80%
were
detected
by
a
charge
or
summons.
This
is
higher
than
the
corresponding
figure
for
non-
aggravated
offences
(56%)
reflecting the serious nature of
these offences. The police work
closely with the CPS (who make
the final decision) in deciding the
most appropriate course of
action in each case.
Sometimes a suspect is charged by the CPS but,
on hearing the evidence, the magistrates decide
that there is no case to answer and the charge is
dismissed;
Between the initial hearing at the magistrates’ court
and the first hearing at the Crown Court, the
prosecuting authority (CPS) may decide the initial
charge is incorrect and change it to another, lesser
offence. This is known as downgrading. At any
stage, the defendant can plead guilty to this lesser
charge, be found guilty by a jury or be acquitted;
The defendant may be acquitted if for example the
prosecution do not present any evidence, or the
defence are successful in arguing there is no case
to answer or, after having heard the evidence, the
jury decide to find the defendant not guilty.
Following a guilty plea or jury trial, the defendant
will be convicted and then sentenced.
Not presented to scale. Victims and offenders may not relate to the same cases.
 
8

In 2012, 8,900 defendants were proceeded against at the magistrates’ courts accused of 
racially or religiously aggravated offences (virtually all criminal cases start in magistrates’ 
courts). The number of proceedings increased over the last decade up to 2010 but have  
declined since, while proceedings for comparable non-aggravated offences have broadly 
decreased since 2007. The most common offences for which defendants were proceeded 
against in court was causing public fear, alarm or distress and assault without injury, 
accounting for around 72 per cent and 18 per cent of defendants respectively. 
 
Trends in the number of offenders convicted (those that plead or are found guilty) at all 
courts are driven by two factors, the number of individuals dealt with by the courts (the trend 
in prosecutions) and the proportion of those individuals who are found guilty. The number of 
offenders convicted at all courts for racially or religiously aggravated offences has almost 
tripled since 2002, from 2,300 to 6,500 in 2012. This increase is driven by both increases in 
prosecutions and increases in the conviction ratio (the number of prosecutions which end in 
a conviction) for every group of racially or religiously aggravated offences. 
 
The sentence breakdown for racially or religiously aggravated offences has changed over 
the last decade, and must be considered in the context of a changing mix in offence types 
brought before the courts. While the volume of offenders sentenced increased over the 
period, an increasing proportion were sentenced for less serious offences. 
 
However, the volume of offenders sentenced to immediate custody for racially or religiously 
aggravated offences has increased by almost 80 per cent over the last decade, from 460 in 
2002 to 810 in 2012. For each offence group, offenders were more likely to be sentenced to 
custody on conviction if racial or religious hostility was assessed as a motivating factor for 
their offence. Furthermore, for each offence group, average custodial sentence lengths were 
longer for offenders that were convicted of racially or religiously motivated offences 
compared with the corresponding non-aggravated offences.  
 
Finally, additional information from the CSEW on the wider aspects of hate crime shows that 
victims said they were more likely to be ‘very much’ or ‘quite a lot’ affected emotionally by 
the incident (68%) compared with victims for overall crime (37%). Furthermore, hate crime 
victims were less likely to be satisfied by the police handling of the incident, 53 per cent 
being very or fairly satisfied compared with 72 per cent for crime overall.  
 
 
9

Introduction 
 
This report brings together, for the first time, a range of official statistics on hate crime in 
England and Wales from across the crime and criminal justice system. It is the third in a 
series of cross-departmental reports collating information from the Office for National 
Statistics (ONS), Home Office and Ministry of Justice on an area of crime and criminal 
justice.3
 
  
These joint reports are produced in part to meet recommendations from previous reviews of 
crime and criminal justice statistics which identified a need to provide a fuller picture of the 
journey of offences and offenders through the criminal justice system. In particular, one of 
the recommendations of the UK Statistics Authority’s report on Overcoming Barriers to Trust 
in Crime Statistics4
 
 was to call for a more joined-up approach to provide the public with a 
better understanding of the treatment of offences and offenders through the criminal justice 
system. 
Including data from various sources in a joint publication makes it easier for users to find the 
information they need without having to compile it from different statistical publications. It 
also allows users to understand the relationships between the different sources of 
information.  
 
In March 2012, the Government published ‘Challenge it, Report it, Stop it: The Government’s 
Plan to Tackle Hate Crime’.5
 
 There are three key objectives set out in the plan: to prevent 
hate crime happening in the first place; increase reporting and victims’ access to support; 
and to improve the operational response to hate crimes. 
The Government has also committed to improve the recording of hate crimes6
 
 and to 
develop a better understanding of the issue by strengthening the evidence base – to give a 
more robust picture of the types of hate crimes that are happening, the victims who are 
affected and offenders’ motivations. 
This publication allows the Government and users to examine the levels of hate crime and 
reporting and patterns of offending and will help Police and Crime Commissioners, police 
forces and other criminal justice agencies to focus their resources appropriately.  
 
The Law Commission have been asked by the Government to consider the case for 
introducing new legal offences for strands of hate crime in addition to existing religiously and 
racially aggravated offences set out in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998.7
3 Previous reports are 
 The work 
presented in this publication can supplement existing evidence to help inform considerations 
around their work. 
Youth Justice Statistics 2011/12 and An Overview of Sexual Offending in England and 
Wales 
4 Overcoming Barriers to Trust in Crime Statistics: England and Wales 
5 Challenge it, Report it, Stop it: The Government’s Plan to Tackle Hate Crime  
6 The Coalition: our programme for government outlined an aim to promote better recording of hate crimes 
against disabled, homosexual and transgender people.  
7 The consultation is available here: Hate Crime: The Case for Extending the Existing Offences 
10

Definition of hate crime 
 
In 2007, the Police Service, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Prison Service (now the 
National Offender Management Service) and other agencies that make up the criminal 
justice system agreed a common definition of ‘hate crime’ and five ‘strands’ that would be 
monitored centrally. Hate crime is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by 
the victim or any other person, to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice towards 
someone based on a personal characteristic.’ The five monitored strands are: 
 
• 
race; 
• 
religion/faith; 
• 
sexual orientation; 
• 
disability; and 
• 
gender-identity. 
 
Crimes based on hostility to age, gender, or appearance, for example, can also be hate 
crimes, although they are not part of the five centrally monitored strands.  
 
Coverage of report 
 
The information in this report is organised into five sections: 
 
• 
Hate crime: Victimisation to police recording 
This section presents data on the levels of hate crime estimated by the CSEW and those 
recorded by the police.  
 
• 
Hate crime by motivating factor 
A summary section on the five centrally monitored hate strands. 
 
• 
Racially or religiously aggravated offences: Police recording to court outcome 
A focus upon those offences that are recorded as racially or religiously aggravated. 
These offences are defined by statute and information is available from police recording 
through to court outcomes.  
 
• 
Additional information from the Crown Court Sentencing Survey  
Analysis of sentencing for assault cases which were not classified specifically as racially 
or religiously aggravated but in which there were motivating hate crime factors. 
 
• 
Additional information from the CSEW 
Information from the survey covering victim satisfaction with the police, the emotional 
effects of hate crime and respondents’ worries about hate crime.  
 
Further details on the data sources can be found in the ‘Data Sources’ section.  
 
 
 
11

Hate crime: Victimisation to police recording 
 
Crime Survey for England and Wales 
 
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) is a face-to-face victimisation survey in 
which adults aged 16 and over resident in households in England and Wales are asked 
about their experiences of crime in the 12 months prior to interview.8
 
 Due to the low volume 
of hate crime incidents in the sample survey, the figures are not sufficiently robust to report 
for a single year of the CSEW. Data from two survey years have therefore been combined to 
give larger sample sizes, increasing the number of incidents available for analysis. For the 
latest time period, data have been combined for the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW; this 
includes incidents experienced by respondents between March 2010 and February 2013. 
Figures reported in this section are 12-month averages of the estimates from the two survey 
years and so are comparable with 12-month CSEW estimates presented elsewhere in this 
and other crime statistics bulletins. 
The coverage of the CSEW is limited to crimes which involve a specific identifiable victim, for 
example where an individual has been assaulted, a household has had property stolen or 
vandalised. The survey excludes other crime where a specific victim is more difficult to 
identify, for example, public order offences without a specific targeted victim. Such crimes, if 
reported, will, however, be included in the police recorded crime data. 
 
There are a relatively low number of victims of hate crime captured in the CSEW and as a 
result the margins of error around the estimates for hate crime are large. They do, however, 
provide context to the police recorded crime and criminal justice hate crime statistics. The 
appendix tables provide a time-series of CSEW hate crimes but the margins of error around 
the estimates are too large to allow a reliable interpretation of trends.  
 
Further limitations related to how victims are asked about their perception of the offender’s 
motivation for the incident are set out in the ‘Data Sources’ section.  
 
Overall hate crime 
 
According to the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW, there were around 278,000 incidents of hate 
crime a year, representing around three per cent of crime overall in the CSEW (9,074,000 
incidents)9
 
.  
As previously stated, survey years have been combined to give more robust estimates for 
the level of hate crime in England and Wales. However, even with the joining of datasets the 
number of victims of hate crime upon which these estimates are based are relatively small. 
Therefore, the associated ‘range’ or confidence intervals10
8 See Section 2.4 in ONS’s 
 around the estimate of total hate 
User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales for details of reference periods. 
9 The 9,074,000 incidents of crime overall in the CSEW is approximately the average of the 9,500,000 and 
8,643,000 incidents reported in the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW. 
10 This confidence interval is the range of values that we can be 95% confident that the actual number of hate 
crimes is between.  
12

crime and each monitored strand are relatively large, as shown in Figure 1. For example, the 
278,000 hate crimes estimated by the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW has a confidence 
interval of between 212,000 and 344,000 incidents. The large confidence intervals mean it is 
difficult to make comparisons between the monitored strands and over time. 
 
Figure 1: Number of estimated incidents of hate crimes with confidence intervals, 
2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW 
 
Note: Figures for all hate crime do not equal to the sum of incidents in individual strands as the victim may have said the crime 
was motivated by more than one strand. 
 
Of the monitored strands asked about in the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW (race, religion, 
sexual orientation, disability and gender-identity), the strand most commonly perceived as 
an offender’s motivation for committing a crime was the offender’s attitude to the victim’s 
race (around 154,000 incidents on average a year). The monitored strand least commonly 
perceived as an offender’s motivation for committing a crime was the victim’s gender-identity 
(the number of CSEW respondents who were victims of this type of hate crime was too low  
to provide a robust estimate)  (Appendix Table 1.01). 
 
The CSEW provides estimates of the levels of personal and household crimes experienced 
by adults in England and Wales. Personal crimes relate to all crimes against the individual 
and only relate to the respondent’s own personal experience (not that of other people in the 
household). Household crimes cover property crimes which target the entire household (for 
example, burglary, criminal damage, or vehicle-related theft) and respondents are asked 
whether anyone currently residing in the household has experienced any such incident.11
11 See Section 2.5 in ONS’s 
  
User Guide to Crime Statistics in England and Wales for a discussion of measures of 
CSEW crime. 
0
50
100
150
200
250
300
350
All hate crime
Race
Religion
Sexual orientation
Disability
Number of estimated hate crimes (000s)
13

 
The 2011/12 and 2012/13 combined CSEW shows there were around 166,000 incidents of 
personal hate crime and 111,000 incidents of household hate crime a year.12
 
 Total CSEW 
crime incidents were around 3,597,000 incidents of personal crime and 5,476,000 incidents 
of household crime a year overall in the CSEW for the equivalent combined period 
(Appendix Table 1.01). While most incidents of overall CSEW crime were household crime 
(60%), the majority of hate crime incidents (60%) were personal crimes such as violence or 
theft from the person. 
The type of incidents perceived to be hate crimes has been explored further. Three per cent 
of crime incidents overall in the CSEW (5% of CSEW incidents of personal crime and 2% of 
CSEW incidents of household crime) were perceived to be hate crime incidents. The 
proportion of incidents that were perceived to be hate crime varied by crime type in the 
2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW (Appendix Table 1.02). For example, for personal crimes nine 
per cent of assault with minor injury or no injury incidents were perceived to be hate crime 
incidents whereas for household crimes three per cent of vandalism incidents were 
perceived to be hate crime incidents. These two offence types accounted for the majority of 
hate crime incidents, with 40 per cent of hate crime incidents being assault with minor injury 
or no injury, while around a quarter of were incidents of vandalism (Table 1). 
 
Table 1: Percentage of hate crime incidents, by type of offence, 2011/12 and 2012/13 
CSEW 
 
 
12 Numbers do not sum to overall hate crime incident total due to rounding. 
Percentages
England and Wales, CSEW
Type of incident
PERSONAL CRIME
Assault with minor injury or no injury
40
Wounding
9
Robbery
5
Theft from person
4
Other theft of personal property
2
ALL PERSONAL CRIME
60
HOUSEHOLD CRIME
Vandalism
24
Burglary
9
Vehicle-related theft
2
Bicycle theft
1
Other household theft
5
ALL HOUSEHOLD CRIME
40
Unweighted base
399
Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales, Office for National Statistics
14

The combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW estimates show that 0.5 per cent of adults were 
victims of any hate crime in the 12 months prior to interview. A similar percentage were 
victims of personal hate crime (0.2%) as were victims of household hate crime (0.2%). To 
put these figures in context, looking at CSEW crime overall, around six per cent of adults 
were victims of any personal crime and around 15 per cent of households were a victim of 
any household crime (Appendix Table 1.04).  
 
Victimisation by personal and household characteristics 
 
Analysis of victimisation by personal and household characteristics showed that for personal 
hate crime (as with CSEW crime overall, ONS, Crime in England and Wales - year ending 
March 2013, Annual Trend and Demographic tables), the risk of being a victim varied by 
socio-demographic characteristics. It should be noted that differences in victimisation rates 
between ethnic groups may be at least partly attributable to factors other than ethnicity. 
Previous research (Jansson,
; 
 2006 Salisbury and Upson, 
) has shown that people with 
a Mixed ethnic background are most at risk of crime. However, multivariate analyses 
identified that, for the key crime types, ethnicity was not independently associated with the 
risk of victimisation (
2004
Jansson et al.,
). The proportion of young people in the Mixed 
ethnic group was, for example, found to be large in comparison to other ethnic groups; and 
young people are at a higher risk of victimisation (
 2007
Flatley et al.,
). There are also inter-
relationships between other personal characteristics. 
 2010
 
The risk of being a victim of personal hate crime in the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW 
(Appendix Table 1.05) was highest, for example, among: 
 
• 
people aged 16 to 24 (0.5% experienced personal hate crime), and in particular men 
aged 16 to 24 (0.7% of 16- to 24-year-old men experience personal hate crime, 
compared with 0.1% of men aged 55–74); 
• 
those with the religious group ‘other’ and Muslim (1.1% and 0.8%, respectively, 
compared with 0.3% of those with ‘no religion’); 
• 
people with Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds (0.6% compared with 0.2% of White 
adults);  
• 
those whose marital status was single (0.5% compared with 0.1% of married adults); 
• 
the unemployed (0.6% compared with 0.2% of adults in employment). 
 
The risk of being a victim of household hate crime (Appendix Table 1.06) was highest 
among, for example, people who: 
  
• 
were social renters (0.6% experienced household hate crime compared with, for 
example, 0.1% of owner occupiers);  
• 
lived in a household with a total income of less than £10,000 (0.5% compared with 0.1% 
among those who lived in households with a total income of £50,000 or more). 
 
 
 
 
15

Repeat victimisation 
 
Repeat victimisation13 is defined here as being a victim of the same type of any hate crime 
more than once in the last year.14  Levels of repeat victimisation account for differences 
between CSEW estimates of incidence rates (Appendix Table 1.03) and victimisation rates 
(Appendix Table 1.04). For instance, high levels of repeat victimisation will be demonstrated 
by lower victimisation rates when compared with corresponding incidence rates (see for 
example, ONS, Crime in England and Wales - year ending March 2013, Annual Trend and 
Demographic tables). 
 
The combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW estimates show higher rates of repeat 
victimisation for hate crime compared with CSEW crime overall (Figure 2 and Appendix 
Table 1.07). Incidents of hate crime were more likely to be repeatedly experienced for 
household crime offences than for personal crime offences. The 2011/12 and 2012/13 
combined surveys showed 36 per cent of victims of household hate crime had been 
victimised more than once in the previous year, compared with 26 per cent of victims of 
personal hate crime. This difference is larger than that found in overall CSEW crime (27% of 
victims of CSEW household crime were repeat victims, compared with 21% of victims of 
CSEW personal crime; Appendix Table 1.07). 
 
Figure 2: Percentage of victims who were victimised more than once in the previous 
year, 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW 
 
 
13 See Section 2.5 of ONS’s User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales for a discussion of repeat 
victimisation. 
14 Where incidents of a similar nature that are probably carried out by the same perpetrator(s) have occurred, 
CSEW estimates only include the first five incidents in this ‘series’ of victimisations, see Section 2.5 of ONS’s 
User Guide to Crime Statistics in England and Wales 
26
36
21
27
0
5
10
15
20
25
30
35
40
Personal
Household
Percentage
Hate crimes
All CSEW crimes
16

Reporting hate crime 
 
The CSEW asks people who experienced crimes in the past year whether the police came 
to know about the incident, that is, whether they reported it or the police came to know about 
it in another way (for example, they arrived at the scene). Based on the 2011/12 and 
2012/13 CSEW, overall 40 per cent of hate crime incidents came to the attention of the 
police, a similar level to overall CSEW crime (39%; Table 2). This compares with 51 per cent 
of hate crimes coming to the attention of the police in the 2007/08 and 2008/09 CSEW. This 
fall is largely seen in the proportion of personal hate crimes coming to the attention of the 
police (48% in the 2007/08 and 2008/09 CSEW and 33% in the 2011/12 and 2012/13 
CSEW).  
 
Table 2: Percentage of CSEW hate crime incidents that came to the attention of the 
police 
 
 
 
The main reason for the fall in the proportion of personal hate crimes coming to the attention 
of the police is likely to be the change in the type of hate crimes identified by the CSEW. For 
example, Figure 3 shows that in the 2007/08 and 2008/09 CSEW more robberies were hate 
crime related compared with the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW where more assaults were 
hate crime related, indicating that the profile of personal hate crime incidents has changed 
over this time. These two incident types have very different reporting rates to the police, with 
assault with minor or no injury incidents having consistently had a lower reporting rate 
compared with the reporting rate to the police for robbery incidents (39% and 51% 
respectively, Table D8 - ONS, Crime in England and Wales - year ending March 2013, 
Annual Trend and Demographic tables).   
 
Percentages
England and Wales, CSEW
Incident 
reported to 
police
Unweighted 
base 3
Incident 
reported to 
police
Unweighted 
base 3
Incident 
reported to 
police
Unweighted 
base 3
Personal hate crime
48
232
42
195
33
170
All CSEW personal crime
37
5,599
39
5,138
40
4,456
Household hate crime
54
284
59
237
51
226
All CSEW household crime
40
19,237
40
17,786
39
14,741
All hate crime
51
516
49
432
40
396
All CSEW crime
39
24,836
39
22,924
39
19,197
Source: Crime Survey for England and Wales, Office for National Statistics
3. Unw eighted base is crime incidents.
4. Please note that the hate crime offences are a subset of all CSEW crime, this should be borne in mind w hen making 
comparsions betw een them.
2007/08 & 2008/092
2009/10 & 2010/112
2011/12 & 2012/13
1. Incidents that w ere reported to the police also includes those incidents that the police came to know  about in another w ay, 
e.g. they arrived at the scene.
2. Combined 2007/08 & 2008/09 CSEW and combined 2009/10 & 2010/11 CSEW exclude gender-identity as questions on this 
strand w ere not included until 2011/12.
17

Figure 3: Percentage of personal incidents that were identified as a hate crime by type 
of personal incident 
 
 
 
Victims of crime who did not report incidents to the police were asked why they did not do 
so. The most frequently mentioned reason for not reporting hate crime incidents was that 
victims believed that the police would or could not do much about them (43% of hate crime 
incidents that were not reported, 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW) (Appendix Table 1.09).  
 
Police recorded hate crime offences 
 
Police recorded crime data also provide information on hate crime offences. In the process 
of recording crime, the police can ‘flag’ an offence as being motivated by one or more of the 
five centrally monitored strands. Not all hate crime comes to the attention of the police; 
therefore the number of police recorded hate crimes is lower than the level estimated by the 
survey. There are also additional reasons why there are differences between the two 
sources and these are described later in the ‘Understanding differences between the 
CSEW and police recorded crime’ section. 
 
There were 42,236 hate crime offences recorded by the police in England and Wales in 
2012/13.15
15 Police recorded hate crime data presented here relate to a subset of crimes that are recorded by the police 
and make up roughly around one per cent of all crimes based on police recorded crime figures for 2012/13 (
 As it is possible for an offence to have more than one motivating factor (for 
example, a hate crime might be flagged as being motivated by hostility to someone’s race 
see 
Crime statistics, period ending March 2013). 
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
Assault with minor 
injury or no injury
Wounding
Robbery
Theft from person
Other theft of 
personal property
Percentage
2007/08 & 2008/09
2009/10 & 2010/11
2011/12 & 2012/13
18

and religion), these offences included 43,927 motivating factors (Table 3). In the last year, 
four per cent of hate crime offences involved more than one motivating factor. 
 
Table 3: Hate crimes recorded by the police, by monitored strand, 2011/12 and 
2012/13  
 
 
 
The level of hate crime recorded by the police was similar in 2011/12 and 2012/13. While 
the corresponding figure for the 42,236 ‘unique’ hate crime offences recorded in 2012/13 is 
not available16
 
, it is possible to compare how many motivating factors for hate crimes there 
were. In 2011/12 there were 44,066 motivating factors, a similar level to the 43,927 
recorded in 2012/13.  
Hate crime figures from the police prior to 2011/12 were published by the Association of 
Chief Police Officers (ACPO).17 These previously published figures by ACPO found similar 
distributions as shown in this release, with the majority of hate crimes being race hate 
crimes. However, data are not directly comparable as the time periods for the collections 
differ as does the recording methodology (forces previously recorded solely one form of 
monitored hate crime for each offence) and geographical coverage (the collection included 
Northern Ireland). Due to these differences, ACPO still make their hate crime data available 
via the True Vision website.18
 
  
Hate crimes by type of offence 
 
Additional information on the nature of hate crimes is available from the Home Office Data 
Hub (HODH19
 
). The HODH is a data collection tool for police recorded crime. In addition to 
collecting data on the count of recorded crimes, police forces can also submit information 
identifying whether offences are hate crimes; hence the HODH contains information on the 
type of offences hate crimes involve. 
16 Information on the overall number of hate crimes including one or more motivating factors was not collected in 
2011/12. 
17 Data for 2009 and 2010 can be found here Recorded hate crime data for 2010 for England, Wales and 
Northern Ireland 
18 True Vision provides information about hate crime as well as providing an online reporting tool.  
19 See Data Sources section for further details. 
Numbers
England and Wales, recorded crime
Hate crime strand
2011/12
2012/13
Race
36,016
35,885
Religion
1,622
1,573
Sexual orientation
4,362
4,267
Disability
1,757
1,841
Transgender
309
361
Total number of motivating factors
44,066
43,927
Total number of hate crimes
N/A
42,236
Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office
19

Police forces are gradually moving to sharing police recorded crime information through the 
HODH and the following information on type of offence is therefore based on a limited 
number of forces (17) that provided suitable data for 2012/13. Caution should therefore be 
applied in interpreting these data as an accurate picture across England and Wales. These 
forces account for only 20 per cent of the 42,236 hate crimes recorded by the police in 
2012/13 and may not be representative of the population profile across England and Wales.  
 
The available data showed that the majority of all hate crimes (56%) involved public order 
offences (and the vast majority of these were public fear, alarm or distress20
 
); the highest 
proportion among the monitored strands was for race hate crimes, where 60 per cent of race 
hate crimes were public order offences. The next most common offence type for hate crimes 
was violence against the person offences (29%). Around a tenth (11%) of hate crimes were 
criminal damage, and the remainder of hate crimes were accounted for by a range of other 
notifiable offences, such as theft offences, burglary and sexual offences (Figure 4).  
The pattern of hate crime offences recorded by the police is different to that shown by the 
CSEW. This is discussed below in the ‘Understanding differences between the CSEW 
and police recorded crime’ section.  
 
Figure 4: Proportion of hate crimes by recorded offence type, 17 police forces, 
England and Wales 2012/13 
 
 
20 This is part of ‘public order offences’ which cover circumstances where an offender is behaving in a way that 
causes or would be likely to cause alarm, distress or disorder. This would generally not include offences where 
physical violence is used (or attempted) against a victim, though it may include some offences where injury is 
threatened. 
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Race
Religion
Sexual 
orientation
Disability
Gender-identity
Total 
Percentage
Public order offences
Violence against the person
Criminal damage
Other notifiable offences
20

The type of offence differs by hate crime strand. For example, 42 per cent of sexual 
orientation hate crimes were for violence against the person offences, higher than that for 
race (27%) and religious (24%) hate crimes.  
 
Not all violence against the person offences result in injury; just over a half (52%) of all 
police recorded violence against the person offences in 2012/13 involved injury (Crime 
statistics, period ending March 2013)
 
. However, a higher proportion of hate crimes that were 
violent crimes resulted in injury – overall, 62 per cent of hate crimes that were recorded as 
violence against the person resulted in injury. 
Understanding differences between the CSEW and police recorded crime 
 
There are a number of differences in the coverage of the CSEW and police recorded crime 
which present challenges in comparing across the sources.  
 
The sources cover different time periods; CSEW data relate to a near three-year period due 
to the joining of two datasets mentioned earlier (although figures presented are per year), 
while police recorded crime data are on a financial year basis (and are only available on a 
comparable basis for 2011/12 and 2012/13).  
 
The coverage of the sources also differs; the CSEW is a victimisation survey which covers 
adults aged 16 and over resident in households in England and Wales while police recorded 
crime figures includes crimes against people of all ages, against society (crimes where there 
is not a direct victim such as public order offences) as well as businesses and institutions. A 
key difference for hate crime offences is the coverage of public order offences in police 
recorded crime but generally not in the CSEW, as many of these offences will not involve a 
specifically identifiable victim. As previously shown, around half of all police recorded hate 
crime is for public fear, alarm or distress, a public order offence.  
 
For the crime types the CSEW does cover, the combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 surveys 
estimated that 40 per cent of hate crime incidents came to the attention of the police. 
However, there are a number of reasons (in addition to those detailed above) why the police 
recorded levels of hate crime are not as high as 40 per cent of the CSEW estimate.  
 
• 
The survey questions might be misunderstood by the respondent. When they are asked 
whether they think a crime is motivated by a factor (such as disability), they may instead 
be responding based upon their perceived vulnerability. 
• 
The respondent is asked in the survey whether the hate crime incident came to the 
attention of the police, not whether the police actually recorded the crime (the police may 
witness an incident and think it not a crime, for example). 
• 
Similarly, while a respondent might say the crime did come to the attention of the police, 
we do not know whether the respondent actually told the police that they thought it was 
motivated by one of the five hate crime strands (and therefore whether the police flagged 
the offence as a hate crime).  
21

• 
In the recording of a crime, it might not become apparent that there was a motivating 
hate factor, meaning that police may not ask the direct question that the survey does 
about whether the victim thought that the crime was a hate crime.  
 
There is also overlap between some of the hate crimes in the CSEW (especially racially and 
religiously motivated hate crimes) as the survey allows respondents to identify more than 
one motivating factor for each incident. For example, based on the combined 2011/12 and 
2012/13 surveys around 20 per cent of racially or religiously motivated hate crimes 
contained both these motivating factors (data not shown). Conversely, only four per cent of 
police recorded hate crimes involved more than one motivating factor.  
 
The differences between the sources can also be seen in the distribution of hate crimes. 
While 85 per cent of hate crimes recorded by the police were race hate crimes, the 
corresponding figure from the survey is 55 per cent (Figure 5). The survey suggests a higher 
proportion of hate crimes are for the religion, sexual orientation and disability hate crime 
strands than is found in the police recorded crime figures. For disability hate crimes, for 
example, this fits the pattern that some respondents in the CSEW might be answering the 
question based upon their perceived vulnerability. For example, a burglary victim with a 
disability may have felt that this was a factor that made them a vulnerable target, but it does 
not necessarily follow that the offender targeted the individual due to a hatred of disability.  
 
Figure 5: Proportion of hate crimes by each strand, CSEW (2011/12 and 2012/13) and 
police recorded crime (2012/13) 
 
 
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
Race
Religion
Sexual orientation
Disability
Percentage
CSEW estimates of hate crime
Police recorded hate crime
22

Hate crime by motivating factor 
 
This section provides a summary of the information available for each of the five monitored 
strands across the sources presented above. Where possible, additional analysis is also 
presented. There is a greater amount of information available for race and religious hate 
crimes than the other three monitored strands. For example, race hate crimes can be 
analysed by characteristics such as race and religion due to the number of incidents 
identified by the CSEW. However, the CSEW cannot be used to provide information below 
the headline statistics on the strands of disability, sexual orientation or gender-identity as the 
number of victims covered by the sample in the survey was too small to provide robust 
estimates. 
 
Given the low volume of hate crime incidents captured in the CSEW, caution should be used 
when interpreting these estimates from the survey. Information on comparing survey data 
with police recorded crime data is provided in the ‘Understanding differences between the 
CSEW and police recorded crime’ section.  
 
Racially motivated hate crime 
 
Based on data from the CSEW for 2011/12 and 2012/13, it is estimated that there were an 
average 154,000 incidents of racially motivated hate crime per year (Appendix Table 1.01). 
The majority of incidents (93,000) were personal crimes (such as assault or personal theft 
offences).   
 
From these combined surveys, 0.3 per cent of adults were estimated to be victims of a 
racially motivated hate crime in the 12 months prior to interview. Adults in non-White ethnic 
groups were much more likely to be victims of a racially motivated hate than White adults 
(1.3% and 0.1% respectively, 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW; Appendix Table 1.13). This is a 
more pronounced difference in the likelihood of victimisation for overall CSEW crime (of 
which hate crime incidents are a subset), where 23 per cent of adults from a non-White 
ethnic group were victims of crime compared with 20 per cent of White adults (2011/12 and 
2012/13 CSEW; Appendix Table 1.05). 
 
Analysis of racially motivated hate crime by religion shows that Muslim adults were more 
likely to be a victim of racially motivated hate crime (2%) than other adults (Appendix Table 
1.13). 
  
In 2012/13, the police recorded 35,885 race hate crimes, similar to the 36,016 recorded the 
previous year (Appendix Tables 2.01 and 2.02). Race hate crimes accounted for 85 per cent 
of hate crimes overall in 2012/13. Race hate crimes accounted for the majority of hate 
crimes in all forces, ranging from 62 per cent of the 604 hate crimes recorded by Suffolk to 
94 per cent of the 295 hate crimes recorded by Bedfordshire. The distribution between 
forces tends to reflect the ethnic diversity of the police force area, with areas with larger 
proportions of Black or Ethnic Minorities tending to have a higher proportion of race hate 
crime. 
23

 Sixty per cent of race motivated hate crimes were public order offences, the highest 
proportion for any strand. Just over a quarter (27%) of race hate crimes were recorded as 
violence against the person and of these nearly two-thirds (63%) resulted in injury (Figure 4; 
Appendix Table 2.03).  
 
Racist incidents 
 
An additional source of information from the police is data on racist incidents. A ‘racist 
incident’ is defined as any incident, including any crime, which is perceived to be racist by 
the victim or any other person. This is a wider collection than race hate crime, as it will 
include incidents that the police deal with that were not subsequently recorded as a 
notifiable offence.21
 
 These figures exclude incidents dealt with by the British Transport 
Police.  
The police recorded 47,548 racist incidents in 2012/13, a similar level to the previous year 
(47,678 incidents; Appendix Table 2.08). The number of racist incidents has fallen since 
2009/10.  
 
Figure 6: Number of racist incidents, England and Wales, 2009/10 to 2012/13  
 
 
 
 
 
21 For example, if graffiti can be cleaned from a surface with little effort then it does not meet the criteria to be a 
notifiable criminal damage offence. However, if the graffiti was racist in nature it would still be recorded as a 
racist incident.  
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
2009/10
2010/11
2011/12
2012/13
Number of racist incidents (000S)
24

Religiously motivated hate crime 
 
Based on data from the CSEW for 2011/12 and 2012/13, it is estimated that there were an 
average of 70,000 incidents of religiously motivated hate crime per year (Appendix Table 
1.01). This total was split fairly evenly between personal crimes (34,000 incidents) and 
household crimes (36,000).   
 
From these combined surveys, it is estimated that 0.1 per cent of adults were victims of a 
religiously motivated hate crime in the 12 months prior to interview. The 2011/12 and 
2012/13 CSEW showed that Muslim adults were the most likely to be a victim of religiously 
motivated hate crime (1.5%; Appendix Table 1.14). 
 
Adults with a non-White ethnic group were more likely to be victims of a religiously motivated 
hate crime than adults of White ethnic group (0.7% and less than 0.1% respectively, 2011/12 
and 2012/13 CSEW; Appendix Table 1.14).  
 
In 2012/13, the police recorded 1,573 religious hate crimes, compared with 1,622 offences 
the previous year (a fall of 3%). Four per cent of police recorded hate crimes in 2012/13 
were religious hate crimes. In all forces, religious hate crimes accounted for less than ten 
per cent of hate crime (ranging between less than 1% to 9%; Appendix Tables 2.01 and 
2.02).  
 
Around one-quarter (24%) of religious hate crimes were recorded by the police as violence 
against the person and of these violent crimes, 64 per cent involved injury (Figure 4; 
Appendix Table 2.03). 
 
Sexual orientation motivated hate crime 
 
The combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW dataset estimates that there were 39,000 sexual 
orientation hate crimes per year on average (Appendix Table 1.01).  
 
In 2012/13, the police recorded 4,267 sexual orientation hate crimes, compared with 4,362 
the previous year (a fall of 2%), Ten per cent of police recorded hate crimes in 2012/13 were 
sexual orientation hate crimes. While there was some variation between forces, sexual 
orientation hate crimes accounted for 20 per cent of hate crimes or less across all forces 
(ranging between 3% and 20%; Appendix Tables 2.01 and 2.02).  
 
Around two in five (42%) sexual orientation hate crimes involved violence against the person 
and of these violent crimes, a half (52%) involved injury. A similar proportion (43%) involved 
public order offences (Figure 4; Appendix Table 2.03). 
 
In October 2013, Stonewall released ‘Homophobic Hate Crime: The Gay British Crime 
Survey 2013’.22
22 
 This survey, based upon the responses from 2,544 lesbian, gay and 
bisexual adults from across Britain in February and March 2013, provides an alternative 
Homophobic  Hate Crime: The Gay British Crime Survey 2013 
25

source of information about sexual orientation hate crime. Key findings include the following.  
 
• 
One in six lesbian, gay and bisexual people has experienced a hate crime or incident in 
the last three years. 
• 
One in ten victims experienced a physical assault. 
• 
More than three-quarters of victims did not report what they had experienced to the 
police and two-thirds did not report it to anyone.  
 
These results are not comparable with those from the CSEW as they are based only on a 
relatively small sample of lesbian, gay and bisexual adults from a self-selecting sample and 
cover a three-year recall period.  
 
Disability motivated hate crime 
 
The combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW dataset estimates that there were 62,000 
disability motivated hate crimes per year on average (Appendix Table 1.01). 
 
In 2012/13, the police recorded 1,841 disability hate crimes, compared with 1,757 offences 
the previous year (a 5% increase). Disability hate crimes accounted for four per cent of all 
hate crimes recorded by the police in 2012/13. There was little variation in the proportion 
recorded by forces with the exception of Norfolk and Suffolk whose disability hate crimes 
accounted for 19 per cent and 20 per cent respectively of the hate crimes those forces 
recorded (Appendix Tables 2.01 and 2.02). 
  
A third (32%) of disability hate crimes involved violence against the person; of these 
offences, 61 per cent involved injury. Public order offences accounted for 30 per cent of 
disability hate crimes (Figure 4; Appendix Table 2.03). 
 
The Life Opportunities Survey23
 
 provides additional information on disability hate crime. In 
December 2011, the Office for Disability Issues published the Life Opportunities Survey 
Wave One results 2009/2011 based on a total of 31,161 interviews with adults aged 16 and 
over, across 19,951 households. 
The survey found that two per cent of all adults interviewed had been a victim of hate crime 
in the past 12 months. This is higher than the CSEW estimate of 0.5 per cent, partly 
because it includes age and gender motivated hate crime but partly due to the different 
question wording.24
 
 
 
 
23 Life Opportunities Survey home page 
24 The answer categories included a health condition, illness or impairment, which is not included in the CSEW 
question. 
26

Gender-identity motivated hate crime 
 
The CSEW has only asked about gender-identity hate crime since 2011/12. Even though the 
data have been analysed using data from combined years of the CSEW, the numbers 
reporting a gender-identity motivated crime is still very small and therefore a reliable 
estimate for this particular strand of hate crime cannot be produced. 
 
Gender-identity hate crime is the least commonly police recorded hate crime, with 361 
offences in 2012/13. This compares with 309 offences in 2011/12, an increase of 52 
offences, or by 17 per cent (Appendix Tables 2.01 and 2.02). However, due to the relatively 
low number of police recorded gender-identity hate crimes, care should be taken in 
examining trends in this type of hate crime. For example, in 2010 the police in England and 
Wales recorded 352 gender-identity hate crimes25
 
, similar to the 2012/13 figure. Around one 
per cent of all police recorded hate crime is gender-identity hate crime, with the proportion of 
offences of this type below five per cent of all hate crime across all forces. 
Just under a half (47%) of gender-identity hate crimes were public order offences and a third 
(32%) were violence against the person offences (Figure 4; Appendix Table 2.03). 
 
 
 
 
25Recorded hate crime data for 2010 for England, Wales and Northern Ireland 
27

Racially or religiously aggravated offences: 
Police recording to court outcome 
 
In the previous sections, statistics were presented on all offences which were ‘flagged’ by 
the police, during the process of recording crime, as being motivated by one or more of the 
five centrally monitored strands. The following section focuses specifically on the subset of 
these offences which are specifically known to be racially or religiously aggravated offences, 
as defined by statute. Information for these offences is available from police recording 
through to court outcomes. 
  
A number of pieces of legislation have introduced specific ‘racially and/or religiously 
aggravated’ offences, which granted the police and courts increased powers to deal with 
individuals committing the following selected offences when the offending behaviour was 
assessed to be motivated by hate: 
 
• 
assault (with and without injury);  
• 
harassment;  
• 
public fear, alarm or distress;26
• 
criminal damage.  
 and  
 
The legislation (in particular the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and Public Order Act 1986) 
allowed the police to record such offences as racially or religiously aggravated based on the 
evidence available when the offence is recorded if: 
 
• 
at the time of committing the offence, or immediately before or after doing so, the 
offender demonstrates towards the victim of the offence hostility based on the victim’s 
membership (or presumed membership) of a racial or religious group; or  
• 
the offence is motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility towards members of a racial or 
religious group based on their membership of that group. 
 
Similarly, defendants can also be proceeded against for these racially or religiously 
aggravated offences. As such, it is possible to make comparisons between the number of 
crimes recorded and the proceedings and convictions for these crimes. However, there are 
some challenges in comparing between the sources which are outlined in the ‘Data 
sources’ section.  
 
For each of these racially or religiously aggravated offences, there is a corresponding “non-
aggravated” offence, for example, criminal damage offences which are not assessed as 
motivated by hostility towards members of a racial or religious group. Within this section 
comparisons are made between trends for racially or religiously aggravated offences and 
their non-aggravated equivalent. Information is presented on the number of racially or 
religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police, the proportion of these crimes that 
26 This is part of ‘public order offences’ which cover circumstances where an offender is behaving in a way that 
causes or would be likely to cause alarm, distress or disorder. This would generally not include offences where 
physical violence is used (or attempted) against a victim, though it may include some offences where injury is 
threatened.  
28

are detected and how these offences are dealt with by the CJS. Data are presented from 
2002/03 for statistics from the police and from 2002 from the courts. As these offences are 
specifically for crimes that are racially or religiously aggravated, data are not available for the 
three other monitored strands. 
 
Racially or religiously aggravated police recorded offences 
 
In 2012/13, the police recorded 30,234 racially or religiously aggravated offences across 
England and Wales (Appendix Table 2.04), accounting for over 80 per cent of all police 
recorded racially or religiously motivated hate crime as shown in Table 3. As with previous 
years, public fear, alarm or distress was the most commonly recorded racially or religiously 
aggravated offence, accounting for around two-thirds (68%) of these aggravated offences 
(Figure 7).27
 
 
Figure 7: Racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police, by type 
of offence, 2012/13 
 
 
The number of racially or religiously aggravated offences has fallen in recent years. Over the 
last five years, there has been a 24 per cent decrease in the number of aggravated offences 
recorded by the police. This compares with a 38 per cent decrease for the corresponding 
non-aggravated offences. Care should be taken in interpreting these trends; the slower fall in 
the aggravated offences may be, for example, due to the police improving their identification 
of these aggravating factors when recording crimes over time.  
 
Figure 8 shows a time series for racially or religiously aggravated offences and the non-
aggravated equivalent offences. These trends are indexed to allow a clearer comparison of 
the changes over time as the series have a different magnitude of offences. Further 
information on these offences can be found in Appendix Table 2.04.  
27 Analysis from the 17 forces supplying additional information to the HODH suggests that around 84 per cent of 
all race or religious hate crime is covered by these racially or religiously aggravated offences. 
68%
13%
8%
6%
5%
Racially or religiously aggravated 
public fear, alarm or distress
Racially or religiously aggravated 
assault without injury
Racially or religiously aggravated 
assault with injury
Racially or religiously aggravated 
criminal damage
Racially or religiously aggravated 
harassment
29

Figure 8: Indexed trends for racially or religiously aggravated offences and their 
corresponding non-aggravated offences 
 
 
 
Police detections 
 
Information is also available on how many crimes the police detect.28 In 2012/13, the police 
detected 13,768 racially or religiously aggravated offences. This gives a detection rate29 of 
46 per cent, higher than the 31 per cent for the corresponding non-aggravated offences. 
However, this higher detection rate is in part due to the different mix of offences between 
racially or religiously aggravated and non-aggravated offences. For example, in 2012/13 
public fear, alarm or distress offences made up 70 per cent of the racially or religiously 
aggravated offences but only 15 per cent of the non-aggravated offences (Figure 9). The 
detection rate30
 
 for public fear, alarm or distress offences was relatively high.  
 
 
28 Detected crime is a term that describes offences that have been ‘cleared up’ by the police. For types of 
detections the police can use see the ‘Types of detections’ section or Smith, K. (Ed.), Crimes detected in 
England and Wales 2012/13 
29 The detection rate is the number of crimes that the police detect in a given year as a proportion of the total 
number of crimes recorded in the same period. However, in practice some crimes are detected in a different year 
to the year that the police recorded the crime. 
30 Detection rates for offences like public fear, alarm or distress are heavily dependent on police activity rather 
than actual levels of criminality. In many offences, the crime will come to the attention of the police and will be 
‘detected’ at the same time.  
0
20
40
60
80
100
120
140
160
Indexed 2002/03 = 100
Total of racially or religiously aggravated offences
Total of corresponding non-aggravated offences
30

Figure 9: Proportion of offences for racially or religiously aggravated offences and 
their corresponding non-aggravated offences, 2012/13 
 
 
Analysis of detection rates by offence type shows that the offences of assault (with and 
without injury) and criminal damage have a higher detection rate when racially or religiously 
aggravated (Figure 10). In contrast, racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or 
distress has a lower detection rate than the corresponding non-aggravated offences. The 
detection rates for harassment offences are similar, although in recent years the aggravated 
offences did tend to have a higher detection rate. Over the time period shown, there has 
been an upward trend in all racially or religiously aggravated detection rates (Appendix 
Table 2.06).  
 
Figure 10: Detection rates for racially or religiously aggravated offences and their 
corresponding non-aggravated offences, 2012/13 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
15%
21%
35%
24%
5%
Non-aggravated offences
70%
13%
9%
4% 4%
Racially or religiously aggravated offences
Public fear, alarm or 
distress
Assault without injury
Assault with injury
Criminal damage
Harassment
31
16
47
64
34
35
48
42
48
36
46
31
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage
Criminal damage
Racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm …
Public fear, alarm or distress
Racially or religiously aggravated harassment
Harassment 
Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury
Assault with injury
Racially or religiously aggravated assault without …
Assault without injury
Total of racially or religiously aggravated offences
Total of corresponding non-aggravated offences
Percentage
31

Types of detections 
 
There are a number of ways in which the police can state they have detected a crime in the 
data they send to the Home Office: by charge or summons, by issuing a caution, by issuing 
a Penalty Notice for Disorder, taking offences into consideration31 or by a number of ‘other’ 
ways.32
 
  
Racially or religiously aggravated offences were more likely to be detected by charge or 
summons compared with non-aggravated offences. Appendix Table 2.07a shows that, for 
2012/13, 80 per cent of detections for racially or religiously aggravated offences were by 
means of charge or summons, compared with 58 per cent for non-aggravated offences. 
Conversely, racially or religiously aggravated offences were less likely to be detected by 
means of caution (13%) compared with non-aggravated offences (26%). This reflects that 
cautions should not normally be used for serious offences and that the police and CPS (who 
should make all charging decisions for hate crime) consider racially or religiously aggravated 
offences to be more serious in general than non-aggravated offences. This pattern is shown 
across all of the offence types with the exception of harassment, where the proportion of 
offences being detected by charge or summons and caution are similar, whether aggravated 
or not (20% were detected by caution; Appendix Tables 2.07a to 2.07f). 
 
Further information on police cautions 
 
In addition to the information on the number of cautions issued from the police detection 
statistics, information is also available from the Police National Computer (PNC), statistics 
on which are routinely published by the Ministry of Justice. Data presented below are based 
on the numbers of offenders cautioned and relate to the offence that the caution was 
ultimately issued for. Although both data sources cover cautions issued by the police, there 
are differences between the datasets – the main one being that the Home Office data are 
counted on a per-victim basis, while Ministry of Justice data are on an offender basis. 
Further explanation can be found in the ‘Data sources’ section. 
 
Cautions are issued by the police and aim to deal with low risk, low-level and mostly first-
time offenders outside of the court system. Cautions are used only where the specific 
circumstances of the case make it appropriate. There may be cases in which the particular 
circumstances of the offence or offender mean that it is not in the public interest to prosecute 
– for example, where the age, welfare or mental well-being of the victim or offender argues 
against a trial. 
 
In 2012,33 there were 1,004 offenders34
31 An offence is deemed to be detected if the offender admits the crime and asks for it to be taken into 
consideration by the court and where there is additional verifiable information linking that offender to that crime. 
 cautioned for racially or religiously aggravated 
offences, including juveniles given a reprimand or final warning. In comparison, in 2012, 
32 Other includes: where the offender dies before proceedings could be initiated or completed; where the CPS 
decides not to prosecute; or where a local resolution was used. For more information on detections see Smith, K. 
(Ed.), Crimes detected in England and Wales 2012/13 
33 Offender statistics are published on a calendar year basis. The year related to when the offender was 
cautioned, not necessarily the year the offence took place.  
32

71,639 offenders were cautioned for the corresponding non-aggravated offences. Therefore, 
for all of these offences (both aggravated and non-aggravated), 1.4 per cent of offenders 
were cautioned for the racially or religiously aggravated version of the offence. Appendix 
Table 3.01 shows the number of offenders cautioned by the police for racially or religiously 
aggravated and the corresponding non-aggravated offences. 
 
Cautions for all the racially or religiously aggravated offence types have decreased since 
2007. In 2012, public order offences of behaviour causing public fear, alarm or distress 
(which do not generally include offences where physical violence is used or attempted 
against a victim, though may include some offences where injury is threatened) accounted 
for 73 per cent of cautions for racially or religiously aggravated offences. The number of 
cautions for these offences has decreased by 60 per cent since 2007 (Figure 11). 
 
Cautions for racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury have decreased by 90 per 
cent over the period, from 116 cautions in 2002 to 18 in 2012. Cautions issued for racially or 
religiously aggravated criminal damage offences showed a markedly different trend to the 
other offence types, with a spike of 436 cautions in 2005. This spike coincides with the six-
month period following the terrorist incidents in London in July 2005. Between 2007 and 
2010 the number of cautions for these offences increased to 355, before falling sharply to 
the 35 cautions issued in 2012.  
 
Figure 11: Offenders cautioned for racially or religiously aggravated offences, by 
offence type, 2002 to 2012 
 
Note: Other offences against the state or public order are not shown due to the small number of offenders.  
 
34 These statistics are based on the number of offenders, not the number of crimes. Some crimes will involve 
more than one offender. Therefore, the number of cautions issued to offenders will not match the number of 
offences detected by caution in the police recorded crime statistics.  
0
500
1,000
1,500
2,000
2,500
3,000
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012 
Offenders cautioned
Year
Assault with injury
Assault without injury
Harassment
Criminal damage
Causing public fear, alarm or distress
33

The declining trend in cautions for racially and religiously aggravated offences (and non-
aggravated offences) broadly matches the trend in the overall use of cautions for all 
offences, which peaked at 362,900 cautions in 2007 and has since declined by 45 per cent, 
to 200,900 cautions issued in 2012. The decline in the use of cautions coincided with the 
replacement in April 2008 of a target to increase offences brought to justice, with one placing 
more emphasis on bringing serious crime to justice.  The latter target was subsequently 
removed in May 2010. 
 
Proceedings at magistrates’ courts 
 
If there is sufficient evidence against the defendant and none of the out of court disposals is 
appropriate, the police or CPS will formally charge the suspect. The law then requires the 
defendant to be brought before a magistrates’ court as soon as possible. On hearing the 
evidence, the magistrates will decide whether or not there is a case to answer (if not, the 
charge is dismissed) and enough evidence to proceed, and if so, whether or not to commit 
the defendant to the Crown Court for trial. 
 
Virtually all criminal court cases start in a magistrates’ court and less serious offences can 
be handled entirely within this court. 35
 
 
In 2012, there were 8,898 defendants proceeded against at magistrates' courts for racially or 
religiously aggravated offences. This represents an 81 per cent increase compared with 
2002 volumes. Criminal proceedings for the offences increased year on year to a peak over 
the last decade of 10,660 in 2010, before decreasing by 17 per cent between 2010 and 
2012. 
 
In comparison, in 2012, 131,754 defendants were proceeded against for the corresponding 
non-aggravated offences. This represents a 15 per cent decrease compared with 2002 
volumes. The number of proceedings for the non-aggravated offences was broadly stable 
between 2002 and 2010, before decreasing 19 per cent between 2010 and 2012. Figure 12 
shows the trends for racially or religiously aggravated offences and the non-aggravated 
equivalent offences – using 2002 as the index value. 
 
Appendix Table 3.04 shows the number of defendants proceeded against at magistrates’ 
courts for racially or religiously aggravated and comparable non-aggravated offences.  
 
 
 
35 For more information on processes within the criminal justice system and related statistics, see “A Guide to 
Criminal Justice Statistics”, available at: 
https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/260147/criminal-justice-stats-
guide-nov-2013.pdf 
34

Figure 12: Defendants proceeded against for racially or religiously aggravated 
offences and corresponding non-aggravated offences, 2002 to 2012 
 
 
 
The trend over the last decade for proceedings for racially or religiously aggravated offences 
has been largely driven by public order offences of causing public fear, alarm or distress, 
which accounted for 72 per cent of defendants proceeded against in 2012. Proceedings for 
the offence rose year on year from 2002 to a peak of 7,726 in 2010, before decreasing by 18 
per cent to 2012. 
 
Since 2002, proceedings for racially or religiously aggravated assaults without injury have 
increased almost year on year, with 1,601 defendants proceeded against in 2012, more than 
double the number in 2002. The remaining racially or religiously aggravated offence types 
have seen a reduction in volumes of defendants proceeded against in recent years, with 
proceedings for harassment and criminal damage decreasing by 22 per cent and 18 per cent 
respectively between 2010 and 2012, and assault with injury proceedings decreasing 62 per 
cent since 2009 (Figure 13). 
 
 
 
0
50
100
150
200
250
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008 1
2009
2010
2011
2012
Defendants proceeded against (index, 2002 = 100)
Year
Racially or religiously aggravated offences (index)
Non-aggravated corresponding offences (index)
35

Figure 13: Defendants proceeded against for racially or religiously aggravated 
offences, by offence type, 2002 to 2012 
 
 
Note: Other offences against the state or public order are not shown due to the small number of defendants.  
 
The demographic profile of defendants proceeded against for racially or religiously 
aggravated offences is slightly different to the profile for the corresponding non-aggravated 
offences. Where racial or religious hostility is assessed as a motivating factor, females 
account for a higher proportion of assault without injury, harassment, and public fear, alarm 
or distress offences. 
 
There is no evidence to suggest the ethnic profile of defendants proceeded against for 
racially or religiously aggravated offences differs from the profile for the corresponding non-
aggravated offences, nor from the ethnic breakdown of the population aged ten or over of 
England and Wales. 
 
Breakdowns by gender, age group and ethnicity of defendants proceeded against at 
magistrates’ courts in 2012 for racially or religiously aggravated and non-aggravated 
offences are provided in Appendix Tables 3.5 and 3.6. 
 
Offenders convicted at all courts 
 
A conviction is where a person or a company is found guilty of a criminal offence at either 
the magistrates’ court or the Crown Court. Conviction ratios are calculated as the number of 
convictions as a proportion of the number of proceedings, and give a measure of the relative 
number of defendants who are found guilty within a given year when compared with the 
number who are proceeded against that year. 
 
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007 2008 1 2009
2010
2011
2012
Defendants proceeded against
Year
Assault without injury
Assault with injury
Harassment
Criminal damage
Causing public fear, alarm or distress
36

The complex nature of the CJS means there are a number of possible factors contributing to 
changes in conviction ratios over time and the difference between ratios for different offence 
types – for example, changes in guilty plea rates, the mix of cases handled in and out of 
court, impacts of operational changes, and so on – and as such it is difficult to separately 
identify the impacts of different factors. 
 
Furthermore, the offence shown in conviction statistics is the one for which the court took its 
final decision, and is not necessarily the same as the offence for which the defendant was 
initially proceeded against. Between the initial hearing at the magistrates’ court and the first 
hearing at the Crown Court, the prosecuting authority, the CPS can decide the initial charge 
is incorrect and change to another offence, known as ‘downgrading’. For example, a charge 
of racially or religiously aggravated assault could be downgraded to one of non-aggravated 
assault, to increase the chances of a conviction. This makes the simple comparison of 
proceedings and convictions for an individual offence group potentially misleading. 
 
In 2012, there were 6,458 defendants convicted at all courts for racially or religiously 
aggravated offences (Appendix Table 3.09).  
 
This represented a 181 per cent increase in convictions (that is, the volume almost tripled) 
compared with 2002 volumes. Convictions for the offences increased year on year to a peak 
over the last decade of 7,265 in 2010, before decreasing 11 per cent between 2010 and 
2012. 
 
In comparison, in 2012, 95,366 defendants were convicted at all courts for the 
corresponding non-aggravated offences, an eight per cent increase compared with 2002 
volumes.  
 
Appendix Table 3.09 shows the number of offenders convicted at all courts for racially or 
religiously aggravated and the comparable non-aggravated offences.  
 
Trends in the number of offenders convicted (those that plead or are found guilty) at all 
courts are driven by two factors, namely: 
 
• 
the number of individuals dealt with through the courts (the trend in proceedings); and  
• 
the proportion of those individuals who are found guilty.  
 
For racially or religiously aggravated offences, the increase in prosecutions between 2002 
and 2012 coincided with an increase in the conviction ratio from 47 per cent to 73 per cent 
over the same period. For the comparable non-aggravated offences, the decrease in 
proceedings between 2002 and 2012 was counteracted to some degree by an increase in 
conviction ratio, albeit a less sizeable increase, from 57 per cent to 72 per cent. Figure 14 
illustrates the trends in proceedings and convictions alongside the change in conviction ratio 
for the two groups of comparable offences. 
  
 
 
37

Figure 14: Proceedings and convictions for racially or religiously aggravated offences 
and corresponding non-aggravated offences, with conviction ratio, 2002 to 
2012 
 
                Racially or religiously aggravated offences 
                  Corresponding non-aggravated offences 
 
 
Notes on comparison of police recorded crimes through to convictions in court 
 
It is not currently feasible to track individual cases from initial recording by the police through 
the CJS. However, it is possible to some extent to make generalised comparisons of overall 
volumes of offences or people counted at each stage of the system – as presented in Figure 
1 in the executive summary – whilst taking into account a number of important caveats. 
 
Firstly, police recorded crime and Ministry of Justice statistics are on a different basis; while 
police recorded crime and detections figures are on a victim basis, criminal justice outcome 
statistics are on an offender basis. Crimes can take place which involve more than one 
victim or more than one offender, and also there may be multiple victims and offenders 
relating to a single crime. For example, if two people are assaulted by three people who are 
then proceeded against, the Home Office figures will show two crimes and two detections 
while the Ministry of Justice figures will show three criminal proceedings, one for each of the 
three offenders. 
 
Additionally, for police recorded crime, the crime is recorded according to the Home Office 
Counting Rules, and stays recorded as this crime unless there is further evidence to the 
contrary. However, the police may decide to issue a caution or the police or CPS decide to 
prosecute, for a lesser offence. Ministry of Justice figures will show the caution issued or 
prosecution for the lesser offence. 
 
Lastly, it is important to note that police recorded crime figures are counted in the year the 
crime was reported, irrespective of when the offence took place. The criminal justice 
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
0
2,000
4,000
6,000
8,000
10,000
12,000
14,000
16,000
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Conviction ratio (%)
Defendants proceeded against / convicted
Year
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
0
30,000
60,000
90,000
120,000
150,000
180,000
210,000
240,000
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Conviction ratio (%)
Defendants proceeded against / convicted
Year
Defendants proceeded against
Offenders convicted
Conviction ratio (%)
38

outcome information is counted at the date of the final outcome, again irrespective of when 
the crime took place. As such, with time lags occurring between the recording of a crime and 
the appearance of a defendant in court, it is not straightforward to compare volumes 
occurring within each time period across the different stages of the CJS. 
 
Sentencing 
 
When someone is convicted of a crime, they will be given a sentence by a court – generally 
time to be spent in prison, a community sentence, a fine or discharge. To determine the 
appropriate sentence in a particular case, courts will assess the seriousness of the offence 
or offences committed by the offender. In assessing the seriousness of an offence, courts 
are required by law take into account the culpability of the offender and the harm the offence 
caused or might foreseeably have caused. Courts will also take into account other 
aggravating and mitigating factors relevant to the offender or the offence, for example, 
whether the offender has relevant and recent previous convictions, or whether the offence 
was aggravated by virtue of hostility to the victim’s race, religion, disability, sexuality or 
gender identity. 
 
While the number of offenders convicted and subsequently sentenced at all courts for 
racially or religiously aggravated offences has increased over the last decade, it is important 
to note that over the period an increasing proportion were convicted and sentenced for less 
serious offences.  
 
The changing mix in racially or religiously aggravated offence types brought before the 
courts is a significant factor to consider when assessing sentencing trends for these hate 
crimes. For example, in 2002, public order offences of causing fear, alarm and distress 
accounted for 66 per cent of offenders sentenced, increasing to 75 per cent in 2012. Across 
the same period, the proportion of offenders sentenced accounted for by the more serious 
offences of assault with injury and harassment decreased, from six and seven per cent 
respectively down to two per cent each. As such, it should not be surprising that the overall 
custody rate (the proportion of offenders sentenced who received an immediate custodial 
sentence) for racially or religiously aggravated offences decreased from 20 per cent in 2002 
to 13 per cent in 2012. 
 
The custody rate for each type of racially or religiously aggravated offence is higher than for 
the offence of a similar nature without the aggravating factor. For example, in 2012, the 
custody rate for racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury offences was 20 
percentage points higher than the comparable non-aggravated offence. 
 
Further, a second factor to consider when assessing sentencing trends is the change in 
sentences available to judges and magistrates across the period. The use of Suspended 
Sentence Orders (SSO) increased dramatically since 2005 as a result of a change in the law 
implemented on 4 April 2005 under the Criminal Justice Act 2003, which made SSOs more 
readily available. SSOs accounted for less than one per cent of offenders sentenced for 
racially or religiously aggravated offences each year prior to 2005, but by 2012 accounted 
for nine per cent of sentences. 
39

 
To look at sentencing trends in more detail, and to illustrate the difference in sentence 
outcomes by type of offending behaviour, it is more meaningful to look at trends for specific 
racially or religiously aggravated offence types. 
 
For example, in 2012, 4,858 offenders were sentenced for racially or religiously aggravated 
public fear, alarm or distress offences, accounting for 75 per cent of offenders sentenced for 
aggravated offences. Changes in the breakdown by sentence disposal have been largely 
driven by fines over the last six years. Figure 15 shows how, excluding offenders sentenced 
to fines, the volume and sentence breakdown of offenders sentenced for the offence has 
been broadly stable since 2007. Overall, fines account for around two-fifths of sentences 
given for this type of offence, with community sentences given to around a quarter of 
offenders, and less than a tenth given a custodial sentence. 
 
Figure 15: Offenders sentenced at all courts for racially or religiously aggravated 
causing public fear, alarm or distress offences, by sentence outcome, 
2002 to 2012 
 
 
Furthermore, in 2012, 1,106 offenders were sentenced for offences of racially or religiously 
aggravated assault without injury – accounting for 17 per cent of offenders sentenced for 
aggravated offences. As shown in Figure 16, since 2006, the sentencing breakdown has 
been broadly stable, with just under half of offenders sentenced to a community sentence, 
around a quarter given immediate custody (around 200-–220 offenders per year), and 
around a fifth given an SSO. 
 
 
 
0
1,000
2,000
3,000
4,000
5,000
6,000
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Total number sentenced
Year
Immediate custody
Suspended sentence
Community sentences
Other disposals
Fines
40

Figure 16: Offenders sentenced at all courts for racially or religiously aggravated 
assault without injury offences, by sentence outcome, 2002 to 2012 
 
 
There is no evidence to suggest that sentence outcomes vary by ethnicity for racially or 
religiously aggravated offences, with the proportions of offenders receiving each type of 
sentence disposal consistent across the three main ethnicities. A breakdown by ethnic group 
of offenders sentenced at all courts in 2012 for racially or religiously aggravated and similar 
offences, with sentence outcomes, is provided in Appendix Table 3.17. 
 
Average custodial sentence length 
 
In 2012, each type of racially or religiously aggravated offence attracted a higher average 
custodial sentence length36
 
 (ACSL) than those handed down for the comparable non-
aggravated offence. For example, offenders sentenced to custody for racially or religiously 
aggravated causing public fear, alarm or distress received an ACSL of 3.6 months, 
compared with 2.4 months for offenders sentenced for the comparable non-aggravated 
offences. Similarly, offenders sentenced to custody for racially or religiously aggravated 
assault without injury received an ACSL of 4.9 months, compared with 3.1 months for the 
non-aggravated offences (Figure 17). 
 
 
36 Excluding life and indeterminate sentences. 
0
200
400
600
800
1,000
1,200
2002
2003
2004
2005
2006
2007
2008
2009
2010
2011
2012
Total number sentenced
Year
Immediate custody
Suspended sentence
Community sentences
Other disposals
Fines
41

Figure 17: Average custodial sentence length (in months) for racially or religiously 
aggravated offences and corresponding non-aggravated offences, 2012 
 
 
However, the overall ACSL for offenders sentenced to immediate custody at all courts for 
racially or religiously aggravated offences was lower than for the comparable non-
aggravated offences, 5.2 months compared with 7.7 months. To understand this, in a similar 
way to the analysis of the composition of sentence outcomes for racially or religiously 
aggravated offences, comparisons of ACSL must be made taking into account the mix of 
offence types brought before the courts. For example, public order offences of causing 
public fear, alarm or distress accounted for just over half of offenders sentenced to custody 
for racially or religiously aggravated offences, compared with nine per cent of custodial 
sentences for non-aggravated offences. In contrast, the offence of assault without injury, an 
offending behaviour which in general attracts longer average sentence lengths, accounted 
for just under half of offenders sentenced to custody for non-aggravated offences, compared 
with 29 per cent of custodial sentences for racially or religiously aggravated offences. This 
different composition of offence types leads to the overall ACSL for non-aggravated offences 
being longer than for aggravated offences. 
 
Over the last decade, the overall ACSL for racially or religiously aggravated offences has 
decreased, from 7.8 months in 2002 to 5.2 months in 2012. This has been driven mainly by 
the decrease in ACSL for racially or religiously aggravated causing public fear, alarm or 
distress (from 5.8 months in 2003 down to 3.6 months in 2012) and assault without injury 
offences (from 6.2 months in 2005 down to 4.9 months in 2012). There are a number of 
possible factors contributing to the decrease in ACSL over time, such as case mix within 
offence groups for people receiving custodial sentences and the types of offences handled 
outside and within court. This makes it difficult to assess what is driving this trend in 
sentence lengths.  
16.7 15.5
4.9
3.1
4.9
4.8
5.2
3.9
3.6
2.4
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
14
16
18
Average custodial sentence length (months)
Offence type
Assault with 
injury
Assault without 
injury
Harassment
Criminal 
damage
Causing public 
fear, alarm or 
distress
Racially or religiously aggravated offences
Corresponding non-aggravated offences
42

Additional information from the Crown Court 
Sentencing Survey 
 
The Sentencing Council for England and Wales collect data on Crown Court sentencing 
decisions via their Crown Court Sentencing Survey (CCSS). On every sentencing occasion 
in the Crown Court, the judge is expected to complete a form that details the harm, 
culpability, aggravating and mitigating factors that they have taken into account when 
passing sentence on the offender. 
 
On 13 June 2011, the Sentencing Council for England and Wales introduced a new 
definitive sentencing guideline for the sentencing of assault offences. The guideline included 
the statutory aggravating factors of motivated by/demonstrating hostility to race/religion, 
disability, sexual orientation and gender-identity as factors indicating higher culpability. The 
CCSS form was at that point changed to follow the structure of the guideline and 
incorporated all the sentencing factors in that definitive guideline. 
 
Courts data show that only one per cent of offenders sentenced at the Crown Court for an 
assault offence were sentenced for a specifically identified (by the statute under which the 
offender was convicted) racially or religiously aggravated offence. Data from the CCSS allow 
further analysis of assault offences sentenced in court which were not specifically classified 
as a racially or religiously aggravated offence by statute, but may still have contained some 
degree of hostility towards a protected characteristic. 
 
In 2012, of offenders sentenced at the Crown Court for assault offences which were not 
classified as racially or religiously aggravated by statute, in less than two per cent of cases 
the sentencing judge indicated that they had taken into account the statutory aggravating 
factor of “the offence was motivated by/demonstrating hostility to race or religion” when 
sentencing the case (Table 4). 
 
Table 4: Proportion of offenders sentenced at the Crown Court for assault offences 
which were not classified as racially or religiously aggravated by statute but 
deemed to be motivated by hatred, by monitored strand, 2012 
 
 
 
Percentages
England and Wales
Offence type
Race / 
Religion
Disability
Sexual 
orientation
Gender-
identity
Total
(one or more 
strands)
Actual Bodily Harm
1%
<0.5%
<0.5%
<0.5%
1%
Grievious Bodily Harm / unlawful wounding without intent
<0.5%
<0.5%
<0.5%
<0.5%
1%
Grievious Bodily Harm with intent
1%
<0.5%
<0.5%
0%
1%
Common assault and battery
5%
<0.5%
0.5%
0%
5%
All assault offences
2%
<0.5%
<0.5%
<0.5%
2%
Source: Crown Court Sentencing Survey, Office of the Sentencing Council
Monitored strand
43

Furthermore, in less than half of a per cent of cases the sentencing judge indicated that they 
had taken into account a statutory aggravating factor of either the offence was motivated 
by/demonstrating hostility to disability, sexual orientation or gender-identity when sentencing 
the case. 
 
Actual bodily harm was the highest volume assault offence sentenced in the Crown Court in 
2012. The statutory aggravating factor of motivated by/demonstrating hostility to 
race/religion was quoted by the sentencing judge in just over half of a per cent of cases as 
having been taken into account. The other three hate crime statutory aggravating factors 
were taken into account in less than half of a per cent of cases by the sentencing judge. 
 
In common assault cases (the fourth highest volume assault sentenced in the Crown Court 
in 2012), in just under five per cent of cases the sentencing judge indicated that the hate 
crime aggravating factor of motivated by/demonstrating hostility to race/religion had been 
taken into account.  
 
Due to the small number of cases were a hate crime statutory aggravating factor has been 
used in an assault offence, it would not be meaningful to do a comparison of the final 
sentence outcome between those cases were the factor was quoted and where it was not. 
44

Additional information from the CSEW  
 
As well as the level of hate crime estimates from the CSEW, additional information is 
available on victim satisfaction with the police following a crime incident, the emotional 
impact of being a victim and respondents’ worry about hate crime. Where possible, 
comparisons are made with overall crime as measured by the CSEW. 
 
Victim satisfaction with the police 
 
CSEW respondents who were victims of crime and had contact with the police in the last 12 
months were asked how satisfied they were with the way the police handled the matter. 
Based on the combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 surveys, 53 per cent of hate crime victims 
were very or fairly satisfied with the way that the police handled the matter. Conversely, 32 
per cent of victims were very dissatisfied with the handling of the matter. Victims of hate 
crime were less satisfied with the way the police handled the matter than victims of CSEW 
crime overall (72% were very or fairly satisfied; Appendix Table 1.10 and Figure 18). 
 
Figure 18: Victim satisfaction with the police, 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW 
 
 
Note: ‘Too early to say’ responses are not shown due to low numbers (less than 1%)  
 
The combined 2011/12 and 2012/13 surveys show that victims of hate crime were less likely 
to think the police had treated them fairly or with respect, compared with victims of CSEW 
crime overall. For example, in 59 per cent of hate crime incidents the victims thought the 
police treated them fairly, compared with 80 per cent of incidents of CSEW crime overall. 
Similarly, in 76 per cent of incidents of hate crime, victims thought the police treated them 
with respect, compared with 88 per cent of incidents of CSEW crime overall. These patterns 
are similar to previous years (Appendix Table 1.10). 
22
37
31
35
16
13
32
15
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
All hate crime
All CSEW crime
Percentage satisfied with police handling of 
incident
Very dissatisfied
A bit dissatisfied
Fairly satisfied
Very satisfied
45

Effects of hate crime 
 
As part of the follow-up questions on their crime experience, victims were asked if they had 
an emotional reaction after the incident and, if so, how much they were affected and in which 
ways. According to the 2011/12 and 2012/13 surveys victims of hate crime were more likely 
than victims of CSEW crime overall to say they were emotionally affected by the incident 
(94% and 82% respectively) and more likely to be ‘very much’ affected (34% and 14% 
respectively); this trend is similar over time (Appendix Table 1.11). 
 
Of those who said they were emotionally affected, victims of hate crimes tended to be more 
affected than victims of CSEW crime overall. For example, more than twice as many hate 
crime victims said they had suffered a loss of confidence or had felt vulnerable after the 
incident (39%), compared with CSEW crime overall (16%). Hate crime victims were also 
more than twice as likely to experience fear, difficultly sleeping and anxiety or panic attacks 
compared with victims of overall CSEW crime (Figure 19). 
 
Figure 19: Emotional impact of hate crime incident, 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW 
 
 
 
 
 
54
61
48
39
39
24
18
22
24
2
63
57
28
16
15
11
10
9
8
2
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
Percentage experiencing:
All hate crimes
All CSEW crimes
46

Worry about being a victim of crime 
 
The CSEW asks respondents how worried they are about being a victim of different types of 
crime. The 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW showed that overall four per cent of adults were 
‘very’ worried about being subject to a physical attack because of their skin colour, ethnic 
origin or religion. Unsurprisingly, as with the other perception questions, this was much 
higher among adults from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds than among White adults 
(16% and 3% respectively; Appendix Table 1.12). This compares with nine per cent of adults 
who were ‘very’ worried about being a victim of any crime, the pattern amongst ethnicity 
showing a similar split (7% of White adults and 21% of all non-White adults). 
 
 
 
47

Data sources  
 
This section describes the data sources used in the compilation of this publication, providing 
further details to that covered in the main text. It also covers the symbols and conventions 
that have been used throughout the tables in the publication. 
 
Crime Survey for England and Wales 
 
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) is a face-to-face victimisation survey in 
which adults resident in households in England and Wales are asked about their 
experiences of crime in the 12 months prior to interview.37
 
 Due to the relatively low volume 
of hate crime incidents in the sample survey, the figures are not sufficiently robust to report 
for a single year of the CSEW. Data from two survey years have therefore been combined to 
give a larger sample size, increasing the number of incidents available for analysis. For the 
latest time period data have been combined for the 2011/12 and 2012/13 surveys. As the 
survey runs continuously throughout the year and respondents are asked about their 
experiences in the 12 months to interview, the time period covered from these combined 
surveys is March 2010 to February 2013. 
This report provides an estimate of the level of hate crime in England and Wales from these 
combined surveys. Analysis of CSEW data is presented for earlier years but, due to the 
small numbers of hate crime incidents reported, the data cannot be compared over time 
(combined data for 2007/08 and 2008/09 and for 2009/10 and 2010/11 surveys). Information 
from the survey also covers details about people’s experiences of hate crime, including 
whether they reported the incident to the police, the emotional affects experienced and their 
satisfaction with the police. Data are also provided on respondents’ worry about hate crime. 
Where possible, comparisons are made with overall crime as measured by the CSEW.  
 
As well as asking respondents about the five monitored strands of hate crime, the CSEW 
also asks respondents if they thought the incident was motivated by age or gender, though 
no analyses are produced by age and gender in this publication.  
 
The CSEW question on whether an incident was motivated by race was first introduced in 
1988, and has been kept as a separate question since then. Religiously motivated hate 
crime used to be asked about as a separate question (in the 2005/06 and 2006/07 CSEW) 
but was merged into the main CSEW question when further hate crime questions referring to 
sexual orientation, age and disability were introduced in 2007/08. In 2009/10, gender was 
added as a motivation and gender-identity was added as a motivation to the 2011/12 survey.  
 
For this publication total hate crime for the 2011/12 and 2012/13 CSEW includes all five 
monitored strands, though estimates for gender-identity hate crimes are not provided 
separately due to the small number of incidents that are perceived as being motivated by 
37 See Section 2.4 in ONS’s User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales for details of reference 
periods. 
48

this strand. Total hate crime for the 2007/08 and 2008/09 CSEW and the 2009/10 and 
2010/11 CSEW only include the four strands: race, religion, disability and sexual orientation.  
 
Limitations of the CSEW questions 
 
The CSEW does not ask about hate crime directly as the concept is not well understood by 
the public and is likely to lead to mis-reporting. Instead, victims are asked about their 
perception of the offender’s motivation for the incident which is an indirect measure as it 
represents the victim’s perceptions of the offender’s motivation for the crime. This may result 
in some over-reporting since it is possible that some crimes considered here as hate crimes 
may actually be more a result of the victim’s vulnerability to crime, for example, a vulnerable 
householder victim of a distraction burglary38
 
, or an assumption on the victim’s behalf that 
the crime was motivated by the offender’s attitude. Conversely, a victim might be unaware 
that they were targeted due to a personal characteristic covered by the hate crime strands.  
The CSEW may over- or under-represent people who are more susceptible to hate crime. 
For example, people with a disability might find it more difficult to take part in the survey if 
their disability impacts on their ability to communicate in particular. Conversely, response 
rates to the survey might be higher among victims than non-victims as the topic seems more 
relevant to them.  
 
Moreover, there may also be other characteristics underlying those covered by the 
monitored strands which mean that the victim is more at risk of particular crime types. For 
example, findings from the CSEW have consistently shown that young people aged 16−24 
are more likely to be victims of crime and it is known that particular Black and Minority Ethnic 
groups have a lower age profile than that for the general population in England and Wales.  
 
It should also be noted that although the CSEW asks whether or not the victim perceived the 
incident to be motivated by the monitored strands (for example, his or her disability status), it 
is possible in the cases of household crimes that it was someone else in the household that 
has the characteristic. For example, it could be that for a household crime the respondent 
was White but another member of the household of Black or Minority Ethnic background was 
the intended target of a crime against the household (e.g. an incident of vandalism). 
 
Police recorded crime 
 
When a potential crime comes to the attention of the police, they will record it as such if the 
circumstances reported amount to a crime defined in law and there is no credible evidence 
to the contrary.  
 
Police recorded crime is based upon the notifiable offence list, a list of all offences that could 
possibly be tried by jury plus a few additional closely related summary offences which are 
38 Distraction burglary is a form of burglary where the offenders trick or dupe the occupant or distract them, 
allowing co-offenders to gain access and commit burglary. 
 
49

dealt with by magistrates (such as assault without injury). Police recording practice is 
governed by Home Office Counting Rules (HOCR) and the National Crime Recording 
Standard (NCRS). These provide a national standard for the recording and classifying of 
notifiable offences by police forces in England and Wales.39
 
  
Police recorded crime data are sent to the Home Office by the 43 territorial police forces of 
England and Wales, plus the British Transport Police. The Home Office supplies these data 
to the Office for National Statistics who have had responsibility for the publication of crime 
statistics since April 2012.  
 
As part of the Annual Data Requirement40
 
 police forces notify the Home Office how many 
police recorded offences were flagged as being motivated by one of the five hate crime 
stands. Potentially, therefore, any notifiable offence could be flagged as a hate crime, 
although in practice certain offences are more likely to be motivated by hate than other 
crimes.  
The Home Office are implementing a new data collection system that will collect 
disaggregate data on crime, including hate crime. The Home Office Data Hub (HODH) is 
designed to align with management information systems used in many police forces, 
allowing for the creation of automated extracts from one system to the other without the 
need for the completion of aggregate data collection forms. Some forces have already 
moved to the HODH; in this bulletin extra analysis is provided from these forces to give 
information on the types of offences being recorded as hate crime.  
 
Racially or religiously aggravated offences 
 
More detailed information is available on a subset of the notifiable offences that the police 
record. This subset of offences is called racially or religiously aggravated offences. 
These offences are defined by statute. A number of pieces of legislation have introduced 
specific racially and/or religiously aggravated offences, which granted the police and courts 
increased powers to deal with individuals committing the following selected offences when 
the offending behaviour was assessed to be motivated by hate: 
 
• 
assault (with and without injury);  
• 
harassment;  
• 
public fear, alarm or distress; and  
• 
criminal damage.  
 
The legislation, in particular the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and Public Order Act 1986, 
allows the police to record such offences as racially or religiously aggravated based on the 
evidence available when the offence is recorded, specifically if: 
 
39 Home Office Counting Rules 
40 The ADR is a list of all requests for data made to all police forces in England and Wales under the Home 
Secretary’s statutory powers. Hate crime has been a part of the ADR since April 2011.  
 
50

• 
at the time of committing the offence, or immediately before or after doing so, the 
offender demonstrates towards the victim of the offence hostility based on the victim’s 
membership (or presumed membership) of a racial or religious group; or  
• 
the offence is motivated (wholly or partly) by hostility towards members of a racial or 
religious group based on their membership of that group. 
 
Information on these offences is available from the police through to the courts.  
 
Police recorded racially or religiously aggravated offences 
 
The number of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police is sent to 
the Home Office as part of the normal police recorded crime return. Information on these 
offences is available back to 2002/03 on a comparable basis, when the NCRS was 
introduced. However, it is likely that the police have improved their identification of offences 
that are racially or religiously motivated over the time period for which data are shown.  
 
Detections  
 
The Home Office also collates information on whether recorded crimes are detected by the 
police, and if so, how they are detected. Detected crime is a term that describes notifiable 
offences that have been ‘cleared up’ by the police.  
 
For the time period covered in this bulletin, the police could use one of several methods to 
count a crime as detected. These are: 
 
• 
charge/summons; 
• 
caution;   
• 
Penalty Notices for Disorder (PNDs); 
• 
offences that are asked to be taken into consideration by a court (TICs); and 
• 
other.  
 
The other category includes a number of outcomes: where the offence was cleared up but 
either no further action was taken against an offender, for example, where the alleged 
offender has died, where the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) by virtue of their powers 
under the Criminal Justice Act 2003 decided not to prosecute or in certain cases the offence 
was cleared up by the use of a form of locally based community resolution.  
 
Given the serious nature of many hate crime offences, the majority of detections are by 
charge/summons. Further information on detections can be found in Crimes Detected in 
England and Wales 2012/13.41
 
 
Cautions (Police National Computer) 
 
The statistics presented in this bulletin in relation to cautions issued to offenders are 
taken from an extract of the Police National Computer (PNC) held within the Ministry of 
41 Crimes detected in England and Wales 2012/13 
51

Justice. The PNC is a large administrative database of offenders and their criminal histories 
and is maintained by police forces through a combination of automatic and manual 
processes. As with any large-scale administrative system, the PNC is subject to error and is 
regularly updated by the police as more information about individual cases becomes 
available. 
 
There are two data sources for the number of cautions issued by the police: those sent to 
the Home Office as part of the detections statistical return; and data taken from the PNC 
which are routinely published by the Ministry of Justice in ‘Criminal Justice System Quarterly 
Bulletin’ publications.  
 
Although both data sources cover cautions issued by the police, there are differences 
between the datasets. The main reason for the differences is that the Home Office data are 
counted on a victim basis, while Ministry of Justice data are on an offender basis. For 
example, if one person is assaulted by two people and these two people are cautioned for 
the offence, the Home Office figures will show one crime, detected by one caution, while the 
Ministry of Justice figures will show two cautions for the two separate offenders. 
 
Additionally, there may be differences in the data in what the caution is issued for. For police 
recorded crime, the crime is recorded according to the Home Office Counting Rules, and 
stays recorded as this crime unless there is further evidence to the contrary. However, the 
police may decide to issue a caution for a lesser offence (given that the offender has to 
agree to accept the caution). Ministry of Justice figures from the PNC will show the caution 
issued for the lesser offence.  
 
Lastly, due to different production schedules, the cautions data may be extracted at different 
times from the police via the detections statistical return and from the PNC. Given that the 
systems where the data are coming from are live operational databases, this can affect the 
exact numbers of cautions in any time period. 
 
Ministry of Justice Court Proceedings Database 
 
The Ministry of Justice collates data on court proceedings via data extracts from court 
database administrative systems. Statistics on proceedings, convictions and sentencing are 
either derived from the LIBRA case management system, which holds the magistrates’ 
courts records, or the Crown Court’s CREST system which holds the trial and sentencing 
data. The data include offences where there has been no police involvement, such as those 
proceedings instigated by government departments, private organisations and individuals 
(mentioned for completeness only, as not relevant to hate crimes, which will always have 
police involvement). From July 1995 all Crown Court data on trials and sentences have been 
received directly from the Court Service’s CREST computer system and from November 
2008 all magistrates’ courts data have been provided by the LIBRA case management 
system. Prior to November 2008, the police reported on magistrates’ court proceedings. 
 
The statistics presented on court proceedings relate to proceedings completed in the year. A 
defendant may appear more than once in the tables if proceedings were completed against 
52

that defendant on more than one occasion during the year. 
 
The figures given relate to persons for whom these offences were the principal offence for 
which they were dealt with.  When a defendant has been found guilty of two or more 
offences, the offence selected is the one for which the heaviest penalty is imposed. Where 
the same disposal is imposed for two or more offences, the offence selected is the offence 
for which the statutory maximum penalty is the most severe. 
 
The offence shown in the conviction statistics is the one for which the court took its final 
decision, and is not necessarily the same as the offence for which the defendant was initially 
proceeded against (for example when the court accepts a guilty plea from the defendant on 
a lesser charge). The sentence shown is the most severe sentence or order given for the 
principal offence (i.e. the principal sentence); secondary sentences given for the principal 
offence and sentences for non-principal offences are not counted in the tables. 
 
The complexities of the criminal justice system and the constraints on resources in collating 
and processing data limit the amount of information collected routinely, so only the final 
outcome of proceedings at magistrates’ courts and the Crown Court (where applicable) is 
recorded. 
 
Crown Court Sentencing Survey 
 
Shortly after taking over from the Sentencing Guidelines Council in April 2010, the 
Sentencing Council for England and Wales introduced a Crown Court Sentencing Survey 
(CCSS) – whereby, on every sentencing occasion in the Crown Court, the judge is expected 
to complete a survey form that details the harm, culpability, aggravating and mitigating 
factors that they have taken into account when passing sentence on the offender. 
 
On 13 June 2011, the Sentencing Council for England and Wales introduced a new 
definitive sentencing guideline for the sentencing of assault offences. This was the 
Sentencing Council’s first definitive sentencing guideline and changed the approach to 
sentencing guidelines established by their predecessor body, the Sentencing Guidelines 
Council. 
 
The Sentencing Council’s definitive sentencing guideline for assault offences included the 
statutory aggravating factors of the offence was motivated by/demonstrated hostility to 
race/religion, disability, sexual orientation, and gender-identity as factors indicating higher 
culpability. The CCSS form was thus changed on 13 June 2011 to follow the structure of the 
assault offences definitive guideline and incorporated all the sentencing factors in that 
definitive guideline. 
 
There is one full year’s worth of CCSS information, covering 2012, on which to base an 
analysis of the hate crime factors of offence motivated by/ demonstrating hostility to 
race/religion, disability, sexual orientation and gender-identity. 
 
53

Although a survey form should be completed for every sentence occasion in the Crown 
Court, in 2012 a survey form was only completed for 60 per cent of all offences sentenced in 
the Crown Court. The Sentencing Council therefore used the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) 
CREST extract of principal offences to produce a “weighted” national (England and Wales) 
analysis of the CCSS analysis. Although CCSS records are matched to the MoJ CREST 
extract of principal offences, there are some minor discrepancies between the data that is 
common to both datasets. The analysis of hate crime factors given here is based on the 
information recorded on the CCSS. 
 
Symbols and conventions  
 
The following symbols have been used throughout the tables and associated Appendix 
Tables in this bulletin:  
 
-  
=  
Nil  
*  
=  
Not applicable / figure suppressed as number small to give meaningful 
 
 
information 
..  
=  
Not available  
54

Links to other resources 
 
Statistics references  
 
The basic statistical information in this document should be considered in conjunction with 
the parent statistical publications and research reports that are now available on related 
issues. These reports are published on www.gov.uk for Home Office and Ministry of Justice 
releases and www.ons.gov.uk for Office for National Statistics 
 
Crime Statistics (National Statistics publications presenting the most recent crime statistics 
from the Crime Survey of England and Wales and police recorded crime) – Office for 
National Statistics 
www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/crime-stats/crime-statistics/index.html 
  
User Guide to Crime Statistics for England and Wales – Office for National Statistics  
www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/method-quality/specific/crime-statistics-
methodology/user-guide-to-crime-statistics.pdf 
  
Crimes detected in England and Wales 2012/13 – Home Office 
www.gov.uk/government/publications/crimes-detected-in-england-and-wales-2012-to-2013 
 
Crime and policing publications (including police recorded crime and detections open data 
tables and others) – Home Office  
www.gov.uk/government/publications?keywords=&publication_filter_option=statistics&topics
%5B%5D=crime-and-policing&departments%5B%5D=home-
office&official_document_status=all&world_locations%5B%5D=all&from_date=&to_date=&c
ommit=Refresh+results 
  
Criminal Justice Statistics (Official Statistics quarterly bulletins) – Ministry of Justice  
www.gov.uk/government/collections/criminal-justice-statistics-quarterly 
www.justice.gov.uk/statistics/criminal-justice/criminal-justice-statistics 
  
A Guide to Criminal Justice Statistics, Ministry of Justice – 29 November 2012  
www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/260147/criminal-
justice-stats-guide-nov-2013.pdf 
  
Court Statistics (Official Statistics quarterly bulletins) – Ministry of Justice  
www.gov.uk/government/collections/court-statistics-quarterly 
 
Crown Court Sentencing Survey (annual bulletins) – Sentencing Council 
http://sentencingcouncil.judiciary.gov.uk/facts/sentencing-survey.htm 
 
 
 
 
55

Previous hate crime publications 
 
Hate crime, cyber security and the experience of crime among children: Findings from the 
2010/11 British crime survey: Supplementary volume 3 to Crime in England and Wales 
2010/11 
www.gov.uk/government/publications/hate-crime-cyber-security-and-the-experience-of-
crime-among-children-findings-from-the-2010-to-2011-british-crime-survey 
 
Hate crimes, England and Wales 2011/12 
www.gov.uk/government/publications/hate-crimes-england-and-wales-2011-to-2012--2 
 
Racist incidents, England and Wales 2011/12 
www.gov.uk/government/publications/racist-incidents-table-england-and-wales-2011-to-
2012--2 
 
ACPO data on hate crime 2011 
www.acpo.presscentre.com/Press-Releases/ACPO-publishes-hate-crime-data-for-2011-
1a1.aspx 
 
Other resources 
 
The True Vision website provides information on hate crime and provides an online 
reporting tool 
http://www.report-it.org.uk/home 
 
Homophobic Hate Crime: The Gay British Crime Survey 2013 (Stonewall) 
www.stonewall.org.uk/documents/hate_crime.pdf 
 
Life Opportunities Survey 
www.gov.uk/government/collections/life-opportunities-survey (home page) 
 
 
 
 
 
 
56

Contacts 
 
Feedback on this publication of is welcomed by each of the contributing departments. If you 
have any feedback, questions or requests for further information about this statistical 
bulletin, please direct them to the appropriate contact given below – split by the data 
sources. 
 
Crime Survey for England and Wales 
 
Press enquiries should be directed to the Office for National Statistics media relations office:  
Tel: xx-xxxx-xxxx Email: xxx@xxx.xx 
 
Other enquiries about these statistics should be directed to the Crime Statistics and Analysis 
Team at the Office for National Statistics: 
  
John Flatley  
Room 4200E 
Segensworth Road 
Titchfield 
Hampshire 
PO15 5RR 
Email: xxx@xxx.xx 
  
General enquiries about the statistical work of the Office for National Statistics can be 
emailed to: xxx@xxx.xx 
  
Police recorded crime and detections statistics  
 
Press enquiries should be directed to the Home Office press office:  
Tel: xx-xxxx-xxxx 
  
Other enquiries about these statistics should be directed to:  
David Blunt  
Chief Statistician  
Home Office  
5th Floor Peel  
2 Marsham Street  
London  
SW1P 4DF  
Email: xxx@xxx.xx 
  
General enquiries about the statistical work of the Home Office can be emailed to: 
 
xxx@xxx.xx 
 
 
57

Proceedings, conviction and sentencing statistics 
 
Press enquiries should be directed to the Ministry of Justice press office:  
Tel: xx-xxxx-xxxx  
Email: xxx@xxx.xx 
  
Other enquiries about these statistics should be directed to the Justice Statistics  
Analytical Services division of the Ministry of Justice:  
Mike Elkins  
Chief Statistician  
Ministry of Justice  
7th Floor  
102 Petty France  
London  
SW1H 9AJ  
Email: xxx@xxx.xx 
  
General enquiries about the statistical work of the Ministry of Justice can be emailed to: 
xxx@xxx.xx 
  
 
 
 
 
General statistical information  
 
General information about the official statistics system of the UK is available from: 
 
www.statistics.gov.uk 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ISBN: 978 1 78246 268 2 
58