Making disablist hate crime visible: addressing the challenges of improving reporting: Chih Hoong Sin

Abstract

In ‘Our Programme for Government’ published in May 2010, the current UK Coalition Government outlined, amongst other things, its commitment to ‘promote better recording of hate crimes against disabled, homosexual and transgender people, which are frequently not centrally recorded’ (Cabinet Office, 2010: 14). The woeful lack of systematic recording and centralised collation of disablist hate crime statistics has been a recurrent lament by those working in the field (Quarmby, 2008). One of the consequences of under-recording is that it can perpetuate the misperception of low levels of harassment, abuse and violence against disabled people (Sin et al., 2009). Certainly, there is confusion over whether there really is such a thing as ‘disablist hate crime’ and, if so, what it looks like (Adams-Spink, 2008). Similarly, there is confusion over how we interpret the rise in recorded hate crime (Cox, 2009). This lack of clarity is extremely unhelpful. As Anne Novis, who leads on hate crime issues for the UK Disabled People’s Council, puts it, the lack of national statistics means no strategic high-level work to deal with the issue, no appropriate funding, no local initiatives ensured (Pring, 2010). While the government’s declared commitment to improving recording ofdisablist and other hate crimes is laudable (Cabinet Office, 2010), it is important to recognise that recording comes after reporting. Simply because a disabled person may have reported to relevant authorities does not mean that the incident will be recorded appropriately or at all. The authorities have to take the report seriously and to recognise that the reported incident is a hate crime, before it is actually recorded as such. Even though police forces across England, Wales and Northern Ireland have, since April 2008, been required to collect ‘hate crime’ data consistently, there are doubts as to whether the data are meaningful. For example, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO) published hate crime statistics for the period January to December 2009 showing a high of 117 disablist hate crimes recorded by Gwent Police to a low of zero for City of London Police, Cleveland Police and Durham Constabulary (ACPO, 2010). Does this mean that there is a higher level of targeted violence and hostility against disabled people in Gwent, and hence is an indicator ofis at recording them as such? For recording to be meaningful as an indication of the prevalence of disablist hate crime, there needs to be better reporting. In terms of how it is being discussed, the recording of disablist hate crime isrepresented as a criminal justice issue. Principally, the police have a responsibility for recording. Two issues arise from this representation of, and orientation towards, recording. First, disabled victims are known to under-report to criminal justice agencies (Sin et al., 2009). Recorded incidents are therefore not indicative of the wider sets of experience and the true prevalence of disablist hate crime. Recorded hate crime statistics therefore need to be interpreted with caution. Second, to simply view the police as having the sole responsibility for recording disablist hate crime is to misunderstand the nature of disablist hate crime (See the chapter by Roulstone and Sadique in this volume) and the wider sets of reporting practices. While disabled people under-report to criminal justice agencies, it does not mean that they do not report at all. Yet very little is known about who else they report to, and what happens to this information. At the same time, however, there are a plethora of national and localinitiatives to encourage better reporting of disablist hate crime (Sheikh et al., 2011). While acknowledging the good intentions behind these initiatives, it is important to pause and appraise critically the extent to which models of hate crime reporting are indeed appropriate. After all, the tragic case of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter Francecca Hardwick attests to the fact that reporting, in and of itself, may not necessarily lead to actions being taken (Leicestershire and Rutland Safeguarding Adults Board, 2008). More recently, David Askew, who collapsed and died in his garden, was found to have reported incidents to the police 88 times in 6 years, to no avail (Williams, 2011). The willingness of the criminal justice system to replicate initiatives, perhapsdrawn from the experience of other forms of hate crime, can be based upon unproven assumptions as to the cause of under-reporting of disablist hate crime. For example, the reasons for under-reporting homophobic hate crimes are quite different from those for disablist hate crimes. Dick (2009) has therefore argued against the uncritical expansion of different initiatives to encourage reporting, such as third-party reporting services, in the absence of any critical assessment of their efficacy for different types of hate crime. This chapter provides a timely appraisal of how we may encourage and improve reporting of disablist hate crime. In order to surmount the challenges around under-reporting, there is a need to understand specific barriers to, and experiences of, reporting. These have to be contextualised against the different types of reporting behaviours and motivations. Currently, the evidence base is skewed towards documenting and explaining under-reporting to the police. This rich seam of evidence certainly points to a range of barriers and potential solutions (see Sin et al., 2009 for a review). Yet addressing this set of policingrelated barriers will only solve part of the problem. There is a compelling caseto the formal procedural aspects that we have come to understand reporting by. Without this understanding, strategies that rely solely on the criminal justice system and on third-party reporting centres to encourage reporting will flounder.There is already quite a substantial body of evidence on under-reporting of disablist hate crime to the police, and reasons for this. At the risk of oversimplification, these can be grouped under two main categories. The first relates to perceptions and experiences of the police. These may involve specific experiences of reporting to the police, but can also involve impressions formed of the police as a result of other encounters. The second involves more general issues relating to the structural position of disabled people in society and the implications this has for relationships, attitudes and awareness.