Assistant Service Manager, Criminal Justice – Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership
HATE CRIME – Any crime motivated by prejudice, based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, transgender identity
CLICK BELOW TO WATCH A CAMPAIGN FROM THE SCOTTISH GOVERNMENT & POLICE SCOTLAND:
The Glasgow Hate Crime Working Group (HCWG) is a multi-agency partnership chaired by an Elected Member which reports directly to Glasgow Community Planning Partnership’s Safe Glasgow Partnership.
The HCWG’s purpose is to encourage and coordinate collaborative approaches to tackling hate crime. It has several members including the:
- Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service;
- Police Scotland;
- Victim Support Glasgow;
- Coalition for Racial Equality and Rights;
- NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde;
- West of Scotland Regional Equality Council;
- Wheatley Group;
- Glasgow Disability Alliance; and representatives from
- Glasgow Health and Social Care Partnership including Education and Social Work.
The group members have a significant role in reporting on Primary and Secondary Hate Crime responses including developing the Hate Crime Awareness Week, providing feedback to the Scottish Government on national and legislative changes and understanding the levels, numbers of hate crime incidents and offences in the City of Glasgow.
The group provided constructive feedback on the major legislative change in terms of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Bill which has updated the existing laws by pulling them into one bill, adding age to the groups that are currently protected by hate crime legislation and creating a new crime of stirring up hatred against any of the protected groups, disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and age.
A recent report for 2019/2020 provided by Justice Analytical Services in the Scottish Government has highlighted that:
- Glasgow City and City of Edinburgh Local authority areas collectively accounted for 21% of Scotland’s population in 2019/20 but accounted for 43% of all hate crimes recorded by Police Scotland in 2019/20.
- Hate crime has fluctuated between 6300 and 7000 offences between the years 2014-15 and 2019-2020, being 6448 in 2019/20.
- Hate crime is significantly underreported.
- Around a third of hate crimes across Scotland:
- involved a victim who experienced the incident at work; and
- 75% of perpetrators were male.
- In religious aggravated hate crimes:
- the perpetrator showed prejudice towards the catholic community on 40% of occasions;
- 10% towards the Protestant community; and
- 25% towards the Muslim community.
- Police were victims in 16.75% of cases.
- Almost two thirds of all race-related hate offences had a visible minority ethnic (non-white) victim – a group that makes up around 4% of the population.
- Of 180 disability hate crimes 130 were targeted at people with a learning disability and 50 at a physical disability.
In 2019/2020 Criminal Justice Social Work Reports where hate crime was present made up 4% of all court report activity and around 2% of Community Payback Order activity within Community Justice workloads. However, this does not reflect clients who have previous convictions for hate crime.
Justice Social Work in Glasgow have had an increasing involvement with the Hate Crime Working Group in 2020/21, and this has focused on helping it understand the characteristics and typologies of those who commit hate crime and giving the group a wider understanding of Tertiary Intervention for Community Justice clients who have previous or recent offences in relation to hate crimes.
As a result of this interaction a Hate Crime workstream has been developed through the Effective Community Interventions working group in Justice Social Work and this is presently in the process of developing a short cognitive behavioural programme with a social-educational element for use with clients on Community Payback orders. It will also have an interesting focus on social media and echo chambers that can lead to entrenched and distorted viewpoints.
The Justice working group was formed during 2020/21 and has focused on developing an understanding of those typologies and dynamic risks in relation to hate crime perpetrators. We have tried to understand the context in Glasgow and reviewed present practice in relation to assessment and intervention activity in Justice Services.
The group has reviewed some National Hate Crime programmes to consider their use and relevance in a Glasgow setting. The working group has made excellent links with the Hate Crime Working Group who will offer oversight and support to the educational components of the programme that are designed to challenge attitudes and myths that can often lead to the instigation of hate speech and hate crime.
Plans are in place to look at restorative justice approaches in the longer-term placing victims at the centre of the process.
We have also had an information exchange with the Glasgow Prevent Strategy through the Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangement (MAPPA) coordinator in Glasgow which ensures we are aware of more extreme groups and activity that informs the work with those who require a different intervention / management approach.
Colleagues in the English Probation Service continued to offer support and guidance in relation to the development of our programme and higher risk of harm groups and individuals. The working group will continue to meet in 2021/22 and look forward to developing a programme structure for staff to use with their clients to tackle attitudes and behaviours that are harmful to victims and marginalised groups in Glasgow – WATCH THIS SPACE FOR AN UPDATE NEXT YEAR.
