Official Statistics

Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2024

Published 10 October 2024

Applies to England and Wales

Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2024

Frequency of release: Annual

Forthcoming release: Home Office statistics release calendar

Home Office responsible statistician: John Flatley

Press enquires: pressoffice@homeoffice.gov.uk, Telephone: 0300 123 3535

Public enquires: crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk

This release contains statistics about hate crime offences recorded by the police in England and Wales.

Key results

• in the year ending March 2024, there were 140,561 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, a 5% decrease compared with the previous year

• while there was an overall decrease in hate crime, there was a 25% increase in religious hate crimes compared with the previous year
• this increase was driven by a rise in hate crimes against Jewish people and to a lesser extent Muslims and has occurred since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict
• as in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for over two-thirds of such offences (70%; 98,799 offences)

1. Introduction

1.1 Overview

This statistical bulletin provides information on the number of hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024.

Police forces have made significant improvements since 2014 in how they record crime. They have also improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime. Because of these changes, police recorded crime figures do not provide reliable trends in hate crime since 2014. Figures from the police should also not be seen as a good measure of prevalence since not all hate crime is reported to them. The figures do, however, provide a good measure of the hate crime-related demand on the police. For more information, see Section 3: Police recorded hate crime data sources and quality.

1.2 Hate crimes recorded by the police

Hate crime is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.’ ^{[footnote 1]} This common definition was agreed in 2007 by the police, Crown Prosecution Service, Prison Service (now the National Offender Management Service) and other agencies that make up the Criminal Justice System. There are 5 centrally monitored strands of hate crime:

• race or ethnicity
• religion
• sexual orientation
• disability
• transgender identity

In the process of recording a crime, the police can flag an offence as being motivated by one or more of these 5 monitored strands ^{[footnote 2]} (for example, an offence can be motivated by hostility towards the victim’s race and religion). For more information, see Section 3 - Hate Crime data sources and quality. Hate crime figures in this bulletin are therefore dependent on a flag being correctly applied to an offence that is identified as a hate crime.

The College of Policing (CoP) published updated guidance on how the police should respond to hate crime in October 2020. The Authorised Professional Practice guidance on hate crime includes information on what can be covered by hate crime. The guidance states:

A hate crime is any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by a hostility or prejudice based on:

• a person’s race or perceived race, or any racial group or ethnic background including countries within the UK and Gypsy and Traveller groups
• a person’s religion or perceived religion, or any religious group including those who have no faith in a theology
• a person’s sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation, or any person’s sexual orientation
• a person’s disability or perceived disability, or any disability including physical disability, learning disability and mental health or developmental disorders
• a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender, including people who are transsexual, transgender, cross dressers and those who hold a Gender Recognition Certificate under the Gender Recognition Act 2004

Race hate crimes can include offences with a xenophobic element (such as graffiti targeting certain nationalities or migrants).

Perceived religion of religious hate crime victims means the religion targeted by the offender. While in the majority of offences the perceived and actual religion of the victim will be the same, in some cases they will differ. For example, if anti-Muslim graffiti is sprayed on a religious temple of another faith, this would still be recorded as an offence of racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage and identified by the respective police force as a religious hate crime against Muslims. There are 9 different perceived religions covered, matching those 2021 Census groupings.

An offence may also be motivated by hatred towards a characteristic that is not currently centrally monitored and therefore does not form part of the data collection presented in this statistical bulletin (for example, age or gender).

Hate crimes are taken to mean any crime where the perpetrator’s hostility or prejudice against an identifiable group of people was a factor in determining who was victimised. While a crime may be recorded as a hate crime, it may only be prosecuted as such if evidence of hostility is submitted as part of the case file.

Terrorist offences may or may not be considered a hate crime depending on the circumstances. A terrorist attack may be targeted against general British or Western values rather than one of the 5 specific strands. Attacks of this nature are therefore not covered by this statistical bulletin, although they will clearly be motivated by hate. However, other terrorist attacks are motivated by a hatred towards one of the centrally monitored hate crime strands covered by this statistical bulletin. For example, the Finsbury Park Mosque attack in June 2017 has been classified as a hate crime because the victims were thought to be targeted because of their religious affiliation.

1.3 Hate crimes and racially or religiously aggravated offences

There are some offences in the main police recorded crime collection which have specific racially or religiously motivated elements defined by statute. These constitute a set of offences which are distinct from their non-racially or religiously aggravated equivalents (the full list of these is shown in Table 1.1). These racially or religiously aggravated offences are, by definition, considered to be hate crimes. Around a half (52%) of hate crime offences were recorded as one of these racially or religiously aggravated offences.

Table 1.1 The 5 racially or religiously aggravated offences and their non-aggravated equivalents

	Racially or religiously aggravated offences		Non-aggravated equivalent offences
Offence code	Offence description	Offence code	Offence description
8P	Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury	8N	Assault with injury
105B	Racially or religiously aggravated assault without injury	105A	Assault without Injury
8M	Racially or religiously aggravated harassment	8L	Harassment
9B	Racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress	9A	Public fear, alarm or distress
58J	Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage	58A 58B 58C 58D	Criminal damage to a dwelling Criminal damage to a building other than a dwelling Criminal damage to a vehicle Other criminal damage

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

1.4 Non-Crime Hate Incidents (NCHI)

A NCHI is an act that is motivated by prejudice or hostility towards a person’s identity but does not amount to a criminal offence. The Home Office does not routinely collect this data.

On the 3 June 2023, the Home Office (under the previous Government) published statutory guidance on the Non-Crime Hate Incidents: Code of Practice on the Recording and Retention of Personal Data. This guidance, which followed interim guidance published in 2022, instructed officers to consider whether there was genuine hostility in the incident or whether it could be considered freedom of speech or thought. While the guidance was aimed only at the recording of NCHIs, and in no way amended the recording practices, processes or thresholds for hate crimes, it is possible that the guidance in turn may have led to greater scrutiny of the threshold of what constitutes a criminal offence of public fear, alarm or distress. However, the Home Office Counting Rules for the recording of these offences has not changed.

1.5 Crime survey for England and Wales (CSEW)

The CSEW is a face-to-face victimisation survey and provides estimates on hate crimes experienced by people resident in England and Wales. However, the size of the CSEW sample means the number of hate crime incidents and victims estimated in a single survey year is too unreliable to report on. Therefore, 3 annual datasets are combined to provide a larger sample which can be used to produce robust estimates for hate crime. Estimates from the survey were last published in ‘Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2019/20’.

The next publication of figures from the CSEW has been delayed because the face-to-face survey was suspended due to public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic. CSEW interviews resumed in October 2021. This means that the first 3-year dataset from the CSEW will not be available until 2025.

2. Police recorded hate crime

Key results

• in the year ending March 2024, there were 140,561 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, a decrease of 5% from the year ending March 2023 (147,645 offences), and the second consecutive annual fall
• prior to the falls seen over the last 2 years, police recorded hate crime offences rose between the years ending March 2013 and March 2022; this prolonged period of increasing offences was thought to have been driven by improvements in crime recording and better identification of what constitutes a hate crime
• there were 98,799 race hate crimes, a fall of 5% from the previous year when there were 103,625 offences, which was driven by decreases in public fear, alarm or distress and malicious communication offences
• as in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for 7 in 10 of all such offences
• religious hate crimes increased by 25%, from 8,370 to 10,484 offences and was driven by a rise in offences against Jewish people and to a lesser extent Muslims and has occurred since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict
• there were falls in the other 3 strands of hate crime; sexual orientation hate crimes fell by 8%, disability hate crimes by 18% and transgender hate crimes by 2%

2.1 Prevalence and trends

Hate crimes are a subset of notifiable offences recorded by the police. In the year ending March 2024, 3% of such offences recorded by the police were identified as being hate crimes. This proportion has gradually increased from 1% in the year ending 2013, as the police have improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime and improved their crime recording practices.

There were 140,561 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales in the year ending March 2024, a decrease of 5% compared with the year ending March 2023 (147,645 offences; see Table 2.1).

There were falls in 4 of the monitored strands (race, disability, sexual orientation and transgender) and an increase in religious hate crimes over the past year.

Table 2.1: Hate crimes recorded by the police by monitored strand, year ending March 2021 to the year ending March 2024

Numbers and percentages					England and Wales
Hate crime strand	2020/21	2021/22	2022/23	2023/24	Percentage change 2022/23 to 2023/24
Race	92,063	109,843	103,625	98,799	-5
Religion	6,383	8,730	8,370	10,484	+25
Sexual orientation	18,596	26,152	24,777	22,839	-8
Disability	9,945	14,242	14,285	11,719	-18
Transgender	2,799	4,355	4,889	4,780	-2
Total number of motivating factors	129,786	163,322	155,946	148,621	-5
Total number of offences	124,104	155,841	147,645	140,561	-5

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

The number of hate crimes recorded by the police increased from 42,255 offences in the year ending March 2013 to 155,841 in the year ending March 2022. This rise was thought to have been driven by improvements in crime recording by the police following a critical inspection by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) ^{[footnote 3]} in 2014. This, in part, led to the removal of the designation of police recorded crime as Accredited Official Statistics ^{[footnote 4]}. Improved crime recording is thought to have particularly impacted public order and violence against the person offences which account for 93% of hate crime offences collectively. It is also thought that growing awareness of hate crime was likely to have led to improved identification of such offences by officers.

Race hate crime

As in previous years, race hate crimes accounted for the majority of police recorded hate crimes (70%; 98,799 offences). These offences decreased by 5% compared with the previous year (103,625). Race hate crime offences peaked at 109,843 offences in the year ending March 2022, with the latest figure representing a fall of 10% from that peak.

The fall in these offences over the last 2 years was due to declines in public fear, alarm or distress and malicious communication offences which will have been, in part, due to changes in the Home Office Counting Rules for recorded crime. Public, fear alarm or distress offences (including those recorded as racially or religiously aggravated) fell from 59,528 to 53,252 over the 2-year period. Malicious communication offences fell from 9,468 to 5,905 offences, with most of the fall occurring in the last year. This follows changes made to the Home Office Counting Rules in May 2023 for conduct crimes (stalking, harassment and coercive and controlling behaviour). The requirement to record 2 crimes when one of them was a conduct crime was removed, leading to a reduction in those crimes often associated with conduct crimes, such as malicious communications.

The proportion of hate crimes that were perceived to be racially motivated in nature has steadily decreased from 85% in the year ending March 2013 to 70% in the latest year. This reflects the greater percentage increases in the other 4 strands recorded by the police over the last decade – although the number of race hate crimes has also increased until peaking in the year ending March 2022.

Religious hate crime

There was a 25% increase in police recorded religious hate crime over the last year, up from 8,370 to 10,484 offences. This is the highest annual count in these offences since the hate crime collection began in the year ending March 2012. The increase in offences was driven by a sharp rise in religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict (Figure 2.1; data from 31 police forces who supplied monthly data to the Home Office Data Hub). Since the spike, the number of offences has declined but to a level higher than seen before the conflict.

Annually, there were 3,282 religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people in the year ending March 2024, more than double the number recorded the previous year (1,543). These offences accounted for a third (33%) of all religious hate crimes in the last year. By comparison, the proportion in the previous year was 20%.

There was also an increase in religious hate crimes targeted against Muslims since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict, with 3,866 offences in the latest year, up 13% from 3,432 recorded the previous year. In the last year, almost 2 in 5 (38%) of religious hate crimes were targeted against Muslims.

Figure 2.1: Number of religious hate crimes targeted against Jews and Muslims by month, year ending March 2024 (31 forces)¹

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Notes:

1. Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Devon and Cornwall, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, West Yorkshire.

The most common hate crimes targeted against Jews and Muslims in the last year were public fear, alarm or distress offences.

Figure 2.2: Proportion of offences targeted against Jews and Muslims, by offence type, year ending March 2024

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Of the 10,484 religious hate crimes recorded by the police in the year ending March 2024, information on the targeted religion was provided in 10,056 of the offences (96%) ^{[footnote 5]}. However, in 14% of cases, the religion was given as ‘unknown’. This proportion has fallen from 18% the previous year. Information on the targeted religions for the year ending March 2024 can be found in Table 2.2.

Table 2.2: Number and proportion of religious hate crimes recorded by the police¹, by the perceived targeted religion, the year ending March 2024

Numbers and percentages		England and Wales
Perceived religion of the victim	2023/24	Proportion of religious hate crimes 2023/24 (%)	Religious hate crimes rate per 10,000 population
Buddhist	20	0	1
Christian	702	7	0
Hindu	193	2	2
Jewish	3,282	33	121
Muslim	3,866	38	10
Sikh	216	2	4
Other	503	5	14
No religion	196	2	0
Unknown	1,382	14	[u]
Total number of targeted religions	10,360
Total number of religious hate crimes (targeted religion provided)	10,056
Number of offences where no information on targeted religion was provided	428
Total number of religious hate crime offences	10,484

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Notes:

See Bulletin Table 4 for detailed footnotes.

1. In some offences more than one religion has been recorded as being targeted, therefore the sum of the proportions do not add to 100%.
2. The total number of religious hate crime with a targeted religion provided includes offences where the police have flagged as ‘unknown religion’. The number of offences where no information on targeted religion was provided does not include these and is provided separately.
3. [u] = Unavailable.

Information on religious hate crimes can also be presented based on rates per population, using estimates from the 2021 Census. In the last year, there were 121 religious hate crimes per 10,000 population targeted at Jewish people, the highest rate for any religious group, and up from 57 per 10,000 the previous year. The next highest rate was for hate crimes targeted at Muslims, with 10 per 10,000 population, up from 9 per 10,000. ‘Other religion’ had a rate of 14 religious hate crimes per 10,000 population. This category on the Census covers 43 different religions ^{[footnote 6]} and may not match up with the religions recorded by the police under this category.

Sexual orientation hate crime

There was an 8% fall in sexual orientation hate crimes over the last year, to 22,839 offences, the second successive year where there has been a decline in these offences. The latest figure was 13% lower than the peak in the year ending March 2022, when 26,152 offences were recorded. As with race hate crime, the decline has been driven by falls in public fear, alarm or distress and malicious communications offences.

Disability hate crimes

Disability hate crimes fell by 18% over the last year to 11,719 offences. This was the lowest figure since the year ending March 2021, when 9,945 offences were recorded. Again, the falls were largely seen in public fear, alarm or distress and malicious communications offences.

Transgender hate crimes

Transgender hate crimes fell by 2% over the last year, to 4,780 offences. Over the last year, there was a fall in malicious communications offences (down 237) and public fear, alarm or distress offences (down 100) and an increase in harassment offences (up 170).

Transgender hate crimes had been rising before the fall seen in the last year, and now account for 3% of all hate crimes recorded, up from 1% a decade ago (year ending March 2014).

Hate crime by multiple factors

It is possible for a crime to have more than one motivating factor (for example, an offence may be motivated by hostility towards both the victim’s race and religion). Thus, as well as recording the overall number of hate crimes, the police also collect data on the number of motivating factors by strand as shown in Table 2.1. For this reason, the sum of the 5 motivating factors in the above exceeds the 140,561 overall hate crime offences recorded by the police. Six per cent of hate crime offences in the year ending March 2024 were estimated to have involved more than one motivating factor ^{[footnote 7]}.

2.2 Hate crime offences by crime type

Just over half (51%) of the hate crimes recorded by the police in the year ending March 2024 were for public order offences, with a further 42% for violence against the person offences (Figure 2.3; Appendix Table 6). Together, these offence categories accounted for over 9 in 10 (93%) of all hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales.

Figure 2.3: Distribution of offences recorded by the police flagged as hate crimes, England and Wales, the year ending March 2024

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

The distribution of hate crime offences differs markedly from overall police recorded crime. Theft offences accounted for a third (33%) of all recorded crime in the year ending March 2024 (for information on offences for all police recorded crime see: Crime in England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk)); these offences would be less likely to involve a motivating factor against a monitored strand. In contrast, public order offences accounted for just 9% of all notifiable offences compared with 51% of hate crime offences (Figure 2.4).

Figure 2.4: Distribution of offences recorded by the police flagged as hate crimes, England and Wales, the year ending March 2024

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Figure 2.5 shows what type of offences were recorded for each monitored strand. As in previous years, public order offences were the most common category to be recorded for all strands except for disability-targeted hate crime. Stalking and harassment offences were the most commonly recorded for disability-targeted hate crimes.

Figure 2.5: Breakdown of hate crime by selected offence types and monitored strand, England and Wales, the year ending March 2024

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Trends in hate crime offences by crime type

As stated above, 93% of hate crimes in the year ending March 2024 were for either public order or violence against the person offences, continuing the pattern seen in previous years. These 2 offence groups were thought to have been previously subject to relatively high levels of under-recording and thus improvements in crime recording since 2014 are likely to have had a larger impact on these groups than other crime types.

Figure 2.6 shows the indexed trend in overall violent and public order offences since the year ending March 2014 compared with all hate crime offences over the same period. As can be seen, there is a strong correlation between the increase in overall public order and violence against the person offences and hate crime.

Figure 2.6: Indexed trends in the number of police recorded violence against the person and public order and hate crime offences, year ending March 2014 to the year ending March 2024 (2012/13 = 100)

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Notes:

1. Total number of offences in the year ending March 2020 includes estimated figures for GMP as they were unable to supply data for the year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019.

Hate crime data by Police Force Area from the year ending March 2012 to the year ending March 2024 can be found in the Home Office Open Data tables.

Racial or religiously aggravated offences

The data the Home Office receives in the main police recorded crime return for racially or religiously aggravated offences is available on a monthly basis ^{[footnote 8]} whereas data for all hate crimes for all forces is only available annually. This allows analysis of in-year trends in these offences. An indexed chart of these offences and their non-aggravated equivalent offence are shown in Figure 2.7.

There are several time periods where a rise in aggravated offences has not been seen in the non-aggravated offences. These ‘spikes’ coincide with certain events. The most recent of these is seen in October 2023, and coincides with the Israel-Hamas conflict. In October 2023, the police recorded 817 racially or religiously aggravated harassment offences, the highest ever monthly total for these crimes. The police also recorded 376 racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage offences in October, 575 in November and 397 in December 2023. These are the 3 highest recorded monthly figures for this offence, with the average monthly total being 222 in the 12 months prior to the conflict.

Previous spikes in racially or religiously aggravated offences have also been observed in July 2016, following the EU Referendum; July 2017, following the terrorist attacks seen in this year; and in Summer 2020, following the Black Lives Matter protests and far-right counter-protests following the death of George Floyd on 25 May in the United States of America. The spike in the summer of 2021 was largely due to an increase of racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress offences.

Figure 2.7: Indexed number of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police by month, England and Wales, April 2015 to March 2024

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

2.3 Hate crime outcomes

The Home Office collects information on the investigative outcomes of police recorded offences, including those that are identified as hate crimes. For further information on outcomes see Crime Outcomes in England and Wales: 2023 to 2024

This section covers how the police have dealt with hate crimes recorded in the year ending March 2024. This analysis is based on the outcomes assigned to crimes recorded at the time the data was extracted (July 2024). Some offences will not have been assigned an outcome at this time and therefore these figures are subject to change.

Racially or religiously aggravated offence outcomes

Data presented in this section is for racially or religiously aggravated offences. This data was available for all police forces, excluding Devon and Cornwall. Data on outcomes for all hate crime offences, which was available for 30 of the 44 police forces ^{[footnote 9]}, is presented in the next section.

At the time this data was extracted, 87% of racially or religiously aggravated offences had been assigned an outcome compared with 93% of their non-aggravated counterparts (see police recorded crime outcomes open data year ending March 2024).

Figure 2.8 shows that racially or religiously aggravated public order and assault offences were more likely to be dealt with by a charge/summons than their non-aggravated counterparts, reflecting the more serious nature of the aggravated offences. For example, over 3 times the proportion of racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm and distress offences had been dealt with by charge/summons than the non-aggravated equivalent offences (10% and 3% respectively). In contrast, for criminal damage, non-aggravated and aggravated offences were equally likely to result in a charge or summons (4%).

Figure 2.8: Percentage of racially or religiously aggravated offences and their non-aggravated equivalents recorded in the year ending March 2024 resulting in charge/summons, by offence type, England and Wales, excluding Devon and Cornwall

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Notes:

1. Figures exclude Devon and Cornwall Police

The overall proportion of racially or religiously aggravated offences resulting in a charge and or summons was, at 8%, the same proportion as the previous year (at the time the year ending March 2023 data was published). There had been a long-term downward trend in the proportion of offences resolved by a charge and or summons. For example, in the year ending March 2015, 30% of racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress offences were dealt with by charge or summons. This pattern has been seen across most crime types, reflecting improvements in crime recording and the changing caseload and crime mix being dealt with by the police.

Flagged hate crime offences – Home Office Data Hub

The Home Office Data Hub (HODH) is a record level dataset of offences recorded by the police in England and Wales and provides information on how hate crimes have been dealt with by the police. The analyses presented are based on data from 30 ^{[footnote 10]} of the 44 police forces in England and Wales that supplied adequate data to the Data Hub. These forces’ data accounted for three-quarters (75%) of all police recorded hate crime in the year ending March 2024.

In total, 90% of hate crime flagged offences recorded in the year ending March 2024 had been assigned an outcome at the time the data was extracted for analysis ^{[footnote 11]}. The remaining 10% were still under investigation. In comparison, 92% of non-hate crime offences had been assigned an outcome at the time of data extraction.

Appendix Table 4 shows that 7% of all hate crime flagged offences had been dealt with by a charge or summons, the same as the previous year.

The distribution of offences recorded by the police that constituted hate crimes were very different to overall crime. Therefore, to provide more meaningful comparisons charge/summons rates are shown below for certain offence groups.

Figure 2.3 shows that violence against the person, public order offences and criminal damage and arson offences comprised 97% of hate crime flagged offences. This proportion was the same for the 30 forces included in this analysis, suggesting that these forces are broadly representative of all. The proportions of outcomes assigned varied by offence type (Appendix Table 5; Figure 2.9):

• in the latest year, 5% of violence against the person hate crime flagged offence were dealt with by a charge or summons, slightly lower than the proportion to non-flagged offences (6%); these proportions have moved closer in recent years
• a greater proportion (10%) of hate crime flagged public order offences had been dealt with by a charge or summons compared with non-hate crime flagged public order offences (6%)
• the same proportion (4%) of hate crime and non-hate crime flagged criminal damage offences were dealt with by charge or summons

Figure 2.9: Percentage of selected offences dealt with by a charge/summons, offences recorded in the year ending March 2024, England and Wales, 30 forces

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Notes:

1. Forces inclued were: Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, and West Yorkshire.

The most frequent outcome recorded for violent offences was “evidential difficulties as the victim does not support action”; this was the outcome for 31% of hate crime flagged violence against the person offences compared with 41% of non-hate crime flagged offences. For both hate crime flagged and non-hate crime flagged violent offences, a formal out of court disposal such as a caution was assigned in 1% of offences and a non-formal out of court outcome (community resolutions) in 2% (Appendix Table 5).

Figure 2.10 shows the proportion of hate crimes that were dealt with by charge or summons for each of the 5 hate crime strands for 3 offence groups. While the proportions for race, religious and sexual orientation hate crimes tended to be higher than for non-hate crimes, the figures for disability and transgender hate crime were lower.

Figure 2.10: Percentage of selected offences resulting in charge/summons, by hate crime strand, offences recorded in the year ending March 2024, England and Wales, 30 forces

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Notes:

1. Forces inclued were: Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, and West Yorkshire.

Figure 2.11 shows the median number of days taken, from the date the crime was recorded until it was closed with a final outcome, for selected hate crime and non-hate crime offences. Hate crime offences, on average, took longer to be assigned a final outcome than non-hate crime offences. For example, the median number of days taken for criminal damage and arson hate crime offences was 22 days, compared with 5 days for non-hate crime offences. Similarly, it took longer to compete an investigation of violence against the person hate crime offences (median = 36 days) than for non-hate crime flagged violent offences (median = 20 days). This suggests more investigative effort being devoted to hate crime offences reflecting the more serious nature of these crimes.

Figure 2.11: Median number of days taken to assign an outcome, hate crime flagged and non-hate crime flagged offences, outcomes recorded in the year ending March 2024, England and Wales, 30 forces

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office.

Notes:

1. Forces inclued were: Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, and West Yorkshire.

Official statistics in development: Ethnicity of victims in racially or religiously aggravated crimes – Home Office Data Hub

From April 2021, it became a requirement for forces to provide the Home Office with the ethnicity of victims of racially or religiously aggravated offences. This data was previously published as experimental statistics (now known as official statistics in development). These are official statistics that are undergoing a development; they may be new or existing statistics, and will be tested with users, in line with the standards of trustworthiness, quality, and value in the Code of Practice for Statistics.

In previous years, we have published data for officer-defined ethnicity. In this bulletin, we have moved to self-defined ethnicity to be in line with Office for National Statistics Census categories and to better reflect the actual ethnicity of the victims of hate crimes. Given this move, this data is still designated as official statistics in development.

Of the 77,690 racially or religiously aggravated crimes recorded by the police in the year ending March 2024, information on the victim ethnicity was provided in 42,441 of the offences (55%).

Where the ethnicity of the victim was known, the victim identified as white in just under a third of offences (31%). Almost a quarter of victims identified themselves as black (23%), and 31% as Asian (Table 2.3). It is likely that offences against white victims will include xenophobic abuse against people not born in the UK.

However, accounting for different population sizes, black and Asian victims had far higher rates of victimisation than white people. In the year ending March 2024, based on the published population figures by ethnicity from 2021 ^{[footnote 12]}, white victims had a rate of 3 aggravated offences per 10,000 population compared with 41 per 10,000 population for black victims and 24 per 10,000 population for Asian victims (Table 2.3).

Given the relatively high proportion of offences where the ethnicity of victim was not recorded, these figures should be taken as indicative only.

Table 2.3: Proportion of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by the police, by victim ethnicity (where known), year ending March 2024, England and Wales

Percentages						England and Wales
			Ethnicity
Offence Code	Description	White	Black/African/ Caribbean/ black British	Asian/ Asian British	Mixed/ multiple ethnic groups	Other ethnic group
105B	Racially or religiously aggravated assault without injury	23	30	33	7	7
58J	Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage	35	17	32	7	9
8M	Racially or religiously aggravated harassment	35	20	27	12	6
8P	Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury	27	26	32	9	6
9B	Racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress	31	22	32	8	7
Total offences		31	23	31	8	7
Rate of racially or religiously aggravated offences per 10,000 population		3	41	24	20	23

Source: Police recorded crime, Home Office Data Hub.

3. Police recorded hate crime data sources and quality

3.1 Introduction

In January 2014, the UK Statistics Authority published its assessment of the Office for National Statistics (ONS) crime statistics. It found that statistics based on police recorded crime data, having been assessed against the Code of Practice for Official Statistics (now the Code of Practice for Statistics), did not meet the required standard for designation as National Statistics.

Police forces have made significant improvements in how they record crime since 2014. They have also improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime over this time period. Due to these improvements, police recorded crime figures do not currently provide reliable trends in hate crime. The figures do, however, provide a good measure of the hate crime-related demand on the police.

The UK Statistics Authority published a list of requirements for these statistics to regain the National Statistics accreditation. Some of the requirements of this assessment were to provide more detail on how data sources were used to produce these statistics, along with more information on the quality of the statistics. Additionally, there was a requirement to provide information on the process used by police forces to submit and revise data, and the validation processes used by the Home Office. To ensure that this publication meets the high standards required by the UK Statistics Authority, details are provided below.

In May 2022, the Office for Statistics Regulation (OSR) wrote to the Home Office following their compliance review into published hate crime statistics across the UK^{[footnote 13]}. The OSR recognised the difficulties in measuring hate crime but found a range of positive features that demonstrate the value and quality of the published statistics in their review. Additionally, they recognised the difficulty in presenting data on police recorded hate crime without the CSEW estimates to provide context to the numbers, meaning “it is difficult to determine whether police recorded hate crime is increasing”. They stated that they had heard from users of a ‘perception problem’, where “the public is likely to see police recorded crime as the main data source, despite ongoing concerns about data quality” and asked the Home Office to make clear in this publication the limitations of police recorded crime data. We have added on the uncertainty of police recorded crime trends in response to this recommendation.

3.2 Police recorded crime data sources and validation process

Hate crime data is supplied to the Home Office by the 43 territorial police forces of England and Wales, plus the British Transport Police. Greater Manchester Police were not able to supply hate crime data for the year ending March 2020 following the implementation of a new IT system in July 2019.

Forces either supply the data at least monthly via the Home Office Data Hub (HODH) or on an annual basis in a manual return. For forces with data on the Data Hub, the Home Office extracts the number of offences for each force which have been flagged by forces as having been motivated by one or more of the monitored strands. Therefore, counts of hate crime via the HODH are dependent on the flag being used for each hate crime offence. It is then possible to derive the count of offences and the monitored strands covered.

In the manual return, police forces submit both the total number of hate crime offences (that is a count of the number of unique offences motivated by one or more of the 5 monitored strands) and the monitored strands (or motivating factors) associated with these offences. From the year ending March 2016, police forces who returned data manually were required to provide an offence group breakdown for recorded hate crimes; prior to the year ending March 2016 only an aggregated total of hate crimes for each of the 5 strands was asked for. It is possible for more than one of the monitored strands (motivating factors) to be assigned to a crime. For example, an offence could be motivated by hostility to race and religion, so would be counted under both strands but would only constitute one offence.

It is known that for some police forces, the addition of tags to crime records could be improved. For example, there may be crimes that are operationally treated as a hate crime but were not correctly identified as a hate crime on their crime recording system. In July 2018, His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) published a report on how the police deal with hate crime, including how crimes are flagged. Findings included a lack of recognition in forces about how important the flagging of hate crimes is and concerns around the lack of effective audit arrangements to check flags had been applied correctly.

The full report can be found here: Understanding the difference: the initial police response to hate crime.

Further information on how the police record hate crime can be found in the College of Policing’s Authorised Professional Practice guidance on hate crime publication, launched in October 2020.

At the end of each financial year, the Home Office carry out a series of quality assurance checks on the hate crime data collected from the police forces (either by aggregate return or via the HODH).

These include checking:

• any large or unusual changes in hate crimes from the previous year
• outliers
• that the number of hate crimes by strand is higher than the total number of offences

Police forces are then asked to investigate these trends and either provide an explanation or resubmit figures where the quality assurance exercise identifies data quality issues.

The data is then tabulated by monitored strand and year and sent back to forces for them to verify. At this stage, they are asked to confirm in writing that the data they submitted is correct and if it is not, then they have the opportunity to revise their figures.

From April 2016, the Home Office began collecting information from the police on the perceived religion of victims of religious hate crimes – that the religion targeted by the offender. While in the majority of offences the perceived and actual religion of the victim will be the same, in some cases this will differ. For example, if anti-Muslim graffiti is sprayed on a religious temple of another faith, this would be recorded as an offence of racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage and flagged by the respective police force as a religious hate crime against Muslims. This collection was voluntary in the year ending March 2017 and made mandatory for the year ending March 2018.

From April 2021, the Home Office has begun the collecting the ethnicity of the victims of racial hate crimes recorded by the police. These were published for the third time in this bulletin. Due to the move from officer-defined to self-defined ethnicity, this data is designated as official statistics in development.

3.3 Understanding differences between the CSEW and police recorded hate crime

Statistics on police recorded hate crime are published on an annual basis, with estimates from the CSEW published every third year. However, due to the suspension of the face-to-face CSEW due to public health restrictions during the COVID-19 pandemic, the next estimates from the CSEW will be delayed until 2025.

Trends in police recorded and CSEW hate crime have been notably different over the time periods that both data sources are available. Police recorded hate crime has risen, while the CSEW has shown a fall over the longer-term. The main reason for this difference will be due to the improvements to recording processes and practices made by the police since 2014. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) have conducted a range of inspections related to police forces’ crime and incident recording practices in recent years. In 2014, Crime recording: making the victim count concluded that 33% of cases involving violence were not recorded by the police in England and Wales. Improvements made by the police were identified in their report State of policing: 2019, where a lower proportion (12%) of violent offences reported to the police went unrecorded.

These improvements have made substantial contributions to rises in recorded crime over recent years. This effect has been more pronounced for some crime types, such as violence against the person and public order offences. These offences account for 9 in 10 police recorded hate crimes, meaning police figures do not currently provide reliable trends in hate crime. The absence of CSEW estimates means it is harder to determine with increased in police recorded hate crime are genuine, or a continuation of recording improvements.

Additionally, there are a number of differences in the coverage of the CSEW and police recorded crime.

The CSEW is a victimisation survey which covers adults aged 16 and over resident in households in England and Wales. 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. This is a key difference for hate crime offences as public order offences are not well covered by the CSEW, as many of these offences will not involve a specifically identifiable victim. Conversely, public order offences account for over a half of police recorded hate crime.

The sources cover different time periods. The most recently available CSEW data is for the combined 3 annual datasets – the year ending March 2018 to the year ending March 2020. Furthermore, as respondents are interviewed throughout the survey year for their experiences of crime in the year to interview, the 3-year survey period actually relate to a near 4-year period. This is required to produce more robust estimates on numbers of hate crimes per year from the survey. The CSEW will therefore only give a very broad estimate of the level of hate crime in England and Wales across these 4 years and will not provide any information on whether the level of hate crime has changed in this period.

Police recorded hate crime data is available on an annual basis. In addition, for racially or religiously aggravated offences, data is available for all police forces in England and Wales on a monthly basis so trends in these crimes around events such as the EU Referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017 can be examined. However, as mentioned above, it is known that police recorded crime data has been heavily affected by improvements in crime recording by the police over recent years, so data from the police is limited in assessing longer-term trends in hate crime.

Other differences in coverage include:

• respondents to the CSEW might misunderstand the survey questions. When they are asked whether they think a crime was committed because of a motivating factor, they may instead be responding based upon their perceived vulnerability. This is likely to be a reason why the estimate of disability hate crime is much higher in the CSEW than the number of these offences recorded by the police
• the respondent is asked in the survey whether the hate crime incident came to the attention of the police and, not whether the police actually recorded a crime (for example, the police may witness an incident and decide that a crime was not committed)
• similarly, while a respondent might say the crime did come to the attention of the police, the survey does not ask whether the respondent told the police that they thought it was motivated by one of the 5 hate crime strands. It is possible that some offences estimated by the survey may have been recorded by the police as a crime, but not specifically as a hate crime
• 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 whether the victim thought that the crime was a hate crime

4. Further information

Accompanying tables

The data tables can be found here:
Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2024.

Other related publications

Previous hate crime statistical bulletins published by the Home Office are available here:
Hate crime statistics.

The Office for National Statistics publishes quarterly publications on crime in England and Wales:
Crime and justice.

Information on crime outcomes can be found here:
Crime outcomes in England and Wales statistics.

Police recorded crime and outcomes Open data tables.

The True Vision website contains more information about hate crime and how to report it.

The Crown Prosecution Service website also carries information about hate crime, including policy and guidance and performance information, which can be found here:
CPS hate crime.

Hate crime statistics for Northern Ireland can be found here:
Police Service of Northen Ireland: Hate motivation statistics.

Hate crime statistics for Scotland for year ending March 2024 can be found here:
Hate Crime in Scotland 2023 to 2024 .

Please note: Figures published by the Scottish Government are based on the number of offenders charged, rather than police recorded crime.

Feedback and enquiries

We welcome feedback on the annual statistics release. If you have any feedback or enquiries about this publication, please contact Crime and Policing Statistics via crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk.

1. https://www.cps.gov.uk/crime-info/hate-crime. ↩

2. Forces may collect wider hate crime data; these are not centrally monitored by the Home Office. ↩

3. https://www.justiceinspectorates.gov.uk/hmicfrs/publications/crime-recording-making-the-victim-count/ . ↩

4. https://uksa.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/images-assessmentreport268statisticsoncrimeinenglandandwale_tcm97-43508-1.pdf. ↩

5. Includes cases where religion has been flagged as unknown. ↩

6. Religion (detailed) variable: Census 2021 - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk). ↩

7. Estimation based upon data from 31 forces who supplied record level data to the Home Office Data Hub. ↩

8. Although data from the main police recorded crime collection are sent to the Home Office broken down by month, the data is only quality assured with police forces on a quarterly basis. ↩

9. Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, and West Yorkshire. ↩

10. These forces were: Avon and Somerset, Bedfordshire, City of London, Cumbria, Derbyshire, Dorset, Durham, Essex, Gloucestershire, Greater Manchester, Hampshire, Kent, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Merseyside, Metropolitan Police, Norfolk, Northamptonshire, Northumbria, North Wales, North Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Suffolk, Surrey, Thames Valley, Warwickshire, West Mercia, West Yorkshire ↩

11. Data was extracted July 2024. ↩

12. Ethnic group, England and Wales - Office for National Statistics (ons.gov.uk). ↩

13. https://osr.statisticsauthority.gov.uk/correspondence/mark-pont-to-amy-baxter-hate-crime-in-england-and-wales-statistics/. ↩