LONDON (Parliament Politics Magazine) – According to Home Office data, there were 155,841 hate crimes reported by police in Wales and England in the year ending March 2022, a 26% increase.
109,843 of these, or more than two-thirds, were hate crimes.
But with 4,355 reports or a 56% increase from the previous year, crimes against transgender individuals witnessed the highest increase.
The Home Office said that the total increase may be attributable to improved police recording, while fewer records were made under Covid regulations in 2020–21.
According to the report, the increase in crimes against transgender individuals may possibly be related to the recent intense social media debate of transgender issues.
The number of hate crimes that specifically target someone’s sexual orientation increased by 42% to 26,152.
An offence that targets a victim’s race, sexual orientation, religion, handicap, or transgender identity is characterised as a hate crime.
A person may occasionally be assaulted for more than one of these reasons at once, such as for being homosexual and transgender or harassed for being both Muslim and Asian.
According to the BBC, public-order offences, arson, and criminal damage made up the majority of the reported offences.
Following two years of declines, there were 8,730 reports of hate crimes fuelled by religion, the highest number in ten years.
Two-fifths of these targeted Muslims, with Jews being the second most often targeted religious group.
A new national high of 6,295 hate crimes was reported by Welsh police forces alone, a 35% increase.
According to Jabeer Butt of the Race Equality Foundation, which works to combat racism, “alarm bells should be ringing for anyone looking at these figures.
The spike in transphobic hate crimes, according to Leni Morris of the LGBT anti-abuse charity Galop, is “staggering,” but it is in line with a rise in the number of people accessing the group’s hate-crime support services.
According to her,”Some will try to say this increase is just showing that the LGBT+ community’s trust in the police is improving – that this is not an increase in incidents but in people coming forward.”
