Disability hate crime statistics 2019-2020: FOI release

Information requested

1. How many disability hate crimes have been recorded by your police force for the last two financial years –2019/20 and 2020/21?

2. How many disability hate crimes were committed by repeat offenders (of a previous disability hate crime) in the last two financial years - 2019/20 and 2020/21?

3. How many disability hate crimes during each financial year (2019/20 and 2020/21) concerned acts of violence against a person?

4. How many incidents of disability hate crime were recorded as taking place online in each financial year (2019/20 and 2020/21)?

Response

I attach a copy of some of the information you requested.

While our aim is to provide information whenever possible, in this instance the Scottish Government does not have some of the information you have requested. Specifically, The Scottish Government does not hold information on the number of hate aggravated crimes which were committed by a repeat offender.

In February 2021, the Scottish Government published 'A study into the characteristics of police recorded hate crime in Scotland'. This publication includes the number of hate aggravated crimes recorded by the police between 2014-15 and 2019-20. Statistics for the 2020-21 financial year will be published in 2022.

In 2019-20, 337 disability aggravated hate crimes were recorded by the police (Table 6). Of these, where the victim was not a police officer in the line of duty, 12% of crimes were cyber-enabled (Table 12). Table 7 of the study provides data on the number of hate aggravated crimes recorded by the police, by the type of crime. The table below shows the number of disability aggravated hate crimes, by type of crime for 2019-20.

Number of disability hate crimes recorded by the police, by type of crime, 2019-20

Crime/Offence type	2019-20
	Number	%
Total	337	100
Crimes of violence and sexual crimes	11	3
Crimes of dishonesty	4	1
Vandalism, fire-raising etc. - of which	5	1
Vandalism etc.	5	1
Fire-raising	-	-
Other crimes	4	1
Offences - of which	313	93
Common assault	25	7
Threatening or abusive behaviour	235	70
Breach of the peace etc.	7	2
Racially aggravated harassment	2	1
Racially aggravated conduct	5	1
Communications Act 2003 offences	38	11
Other offences	1	0
Unknown	-	-

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