Police Scotland – Area Commander’s Report

Hate Crime Awareness Week

National Hate Crime Awareness Week runs from 10 – 17 October and Police Scotland are encouraging people to come forward and report any instances of hate crime.

The official definition of hate crime is ‘any crime which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated (wholly or partly) by malice and ill-will towards a social group’.

It means that anyone can be a victim of hate crime at any time and hate crime can happen in many different ways. It could be someone shouting and swearing at you or threatening you or it could be offensive graffiti, being physically assaulted or receiving online abuse.

So if you are targeted by a person or group of people and you think the reason you have been targeted is because of Disability, Race, Religion/Belief, Sexual Orientation, Transgender Identity – Then this is a hate crime and it should be reported.

Also if you witness such behaviour being inflicted on another person then you should also feel confident to contact the Police; you don’t need to be the victim to report a hate crime.

In 2018-19 there were an average of 13 hate crime charges reported to the Procurator Fiscal every day and in the same 12 month period 25% of all hate crime charges reported to the Procurator Fiscal in Scotland were motivated by sexual orientation.

Disabled children are almost four times more likely to experience violence than non-disabled children.

Police Scotland takes hate crime very seriously and will do everything we can to bring those responsible to justice; we can try to prevent the same thing happening to someone else and together we can work to rid Scotland of hate.

Further information is available at www.scotland.police.uk/hate or visit https://onescotland.org/campaigns/hate-crime-campaign/