Hate Crime Strategy delivery plan 2023 to 2026: implementation review

Aim one

Victims of hate crime are treated with fairness, compassion and in a trauma-informed manner in which their safety and recovery is a priority.

We know that experiencing a hate crime is a traumatic experience, and we want everyone to be treated in a way that recognises this, including as they interact with the police and criminal justice system. The Scottish Government and partners have undertaken a range of activity since publication of the delivery plan to improve support for victims, including as part of this wider aim.

Between 2022-2025, the Scottish Government provided £48 million in funding through the Victim Centred Approach Fund as part of our commitment to putting victims at the heart of the justice system, as well as funding of almost £600,000 to trauma specialists to develop and implement a Knowledge and Skills Framework for trauma-informed justice. Additionally, the Victims, Witnesses and Justice Reform (Scotland) Act 2025 will put victims and witnesses at the heart of a modern and fair justice system, and introduces a range of trauma-informed approaches to support victims to give the best evidence while minimising the potential for re-traumatisation, including a new Victims and Witnesses Commissioner to champion the rights of victims and witnesses. It also incorporates enhanced special measures to protect vulnerable witnesses and parties in civil cases, and extends the rights of victims to make statements to the court setting out how the crime has impacted them physically, emotionally and financially.

The Scottish Government has also worked with communication specialists to develop ‘People at Heart’, an approach to communication that ensures ease of access and understanding. The Scottish Government has funded communication specialists to re-write key communications, including the creation of a style guide for criminal justice organisations and to develop and deliver training and e-learning opportunities.

In December 2024 COPFS published their updated Standards of Service for Victims and Witnesses. This is a partnership agreement between Police Scotland, the Scottish Courts and Tribunals Service (SCTS), the Scottish Prison Service, the Parole Board for Scotland and COPFS. It sets out the standards of service for victims and witnesses at each stage of the criminal justice process and who you can contact for help and advice. A range of justice partners, including COPFS, SCTS, Police Scotland and Victim Support Scotland are signatories to the Joint Protocol entitled ‘Working Together for Victims and Witnesses’.

Action 1

Scottish Government and Police Scotland, in partnership with the Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group, will undertake meaningful lived experience engagement to understand how we can best tackle hatred and prejudice.

Lived experience engagement was central to the development of the Hate Crime Strategy and its associated Delivery Plan, and has guided the delivery of our activities throughout this first phase of implementation.

What has been delivered?

In support of this action, the Scottish Government organised the Tackling Prejudice and Building Cohesive Communities Conference in November 2023 with the support of Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group members – which provided the opportunity for those who contributed lived experience to hear first-hand the actions outlined within the Delivery Plan and provide feedback as to how they might be implemented.

The Minister for Victims and Community Safety has undertaken a range of engagements to hear from communities regarding the impact of hatred and prejudice since publication of the Delivery Plan, including in 2024 the organisation of a workshop at the Scottish Interfaith Week Conference, attendance at BEMIS’s Race, Equality and Human Rights Network, and joining a session with young people from YouthLink Scotland’s United Voices Network during National Hate Crime Awareness Week. The Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs also attended a session of Age Scotland’s Scottish Ethnic Minority Older People’s Forum, where members shared that they ‘appreciated the opportunity to share their lived experience of hate crime [with the Cabinet Secretary].’^[1]

The Scottish Government also sought the experiences of communities, and those impacted by the design and development of our actions, throughout the review and refresh of third-party reporting in partnership with Police Scotland, Victim Support Scotland and NEC Design. To support the development of the joint CoSLA and Scottish Government toolkit, CoSLA coordinated engagement sessions with approximately 100 local authority officers working specifically with marginalised groups. A further session was coordinated by the Scottish Refugee Council on the toolkit.

Following the violence and disorder that took place across the UK in the aftermath of the tragic murder of three young girls in Southport in 2024, partners including BEMIS, Interfaith Scotland and CEMVO facilitated engagement between Ministers and communities. Although disorder of the same level did not materialise in Scotland, this provided an opportunity to explore community experiences and concerns, and offer reassurance during that period.

Partners have also undertaken a range of lived experience engagement to support delivery of commitments, including utilising the voices of two young women from respectme’s ‘Youth Action Group’ in Education Scotland’s Hate Crime and Prejudice-based Bullying Resource, which ‘affected their personal understanding in the value of properly naming the magnitude of what they were witnessing/experiencing, which they now take forward into their adult life’^[2].

What are the next steps?

The Scottish Government and partners are committed to ensuring we take a human rights-based approach, grounded and informed by the lived experience of communities. This is an integral aspect of our work and we will continue to seek, value, and embed as we build upon our approach to tackling hatred.

Action 2: The Scottish Government will commence the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021

What has been delivered?

The implementation of new hate crime legislation was an essential element of our ambitious programme of work to tackle hate crime, and affords protection to those who need it.

The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021 (herein referred to as ‘the Act’) commenced on 1 April 2024. This legislation aims to address behaviour motivated by hatred or prejudice, ensuring that the law protects individuals against hate-motivated harm, both online and offline. The Act maintained prior legislative protections against offences aggravated by prejudice against disability, race, religion, sexual orientation, variations in sex characteristics and transgender identity, and added age.

The Act also provided for new ‘stirring up of hatred’ offences, covering all characteristics protected in the updated legislative framework, to complement the existing offence of stirring up racial hatred that has been part of our criminal law and the law of the whole of the UK for decades.

The UN Human Rights Committee welcomed “the adoption by the State party of the following legislative policy and institutional measures… The Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, on 23 April 2021… The Hate Crime Strategy for Scotland, in March 2023.”^[3]

In 2024, the Minister for Victims and Community Safety responded to a joint letter from 14 third-sector equalities organisations in Scotland welcoming “the important changes to existing hate crime law that the Act brings… we believe these new changes will make the law more consistent, and should help address some of the very worst examples of incitement to hatred. We all want to live in a society where everyone is safe and free to be themselves, to be accepted and supported by those around them, to be treated with dignity and respect, and to feel welcome in the places they live and work. However, for many people in the communities that we are a part of and represent, this is not the case, and hatred and prejudice are a real part of our daily lives. This is why we believe this legislation is necessary and important – hate crime has no place in a free and equal society, and victims of hate crime should be empowered and encouraged to report this, safe in the knowledge that they will be taken seriously and treated with respect and understanding.”^[4]

Commencement of this legislation faced significant challenges, however, including high-profile commentary questioning the Act’s compatibility with freedom of expression and calls for its repeal. There was also confusion about how the law would be applied in practice. In parallel, there was clear evidence for the necessity of the legislation grounded in Lord Bracadale’s independent review and the sustained levels of prejudice-motivated recorded crime in Scotland, as well as testimonies from affected communities about the life-altering impacts that hate crime can have. We heard from partners that such negative public discourse around the Act made some victims and communities feel further marginalised, at a time where legislation was intended to enhance protection and reassurance.

The Scottish Government reflected on the experience and adjusted the approach to strengthen clarity and confidence. Recognising that misinformation had contributed to these feelings amongst communities, we published a ‘myth-buster’ to address common misunderstandings about the Act (particularly in relation to freedom of expression) and a statement describing the legislation was delivered to parliament by the Cabinet Secretary for Justice and Home Affairs.

After this, a workshop was convened with a range of community and equality organisations to create space for honest discussion about the impact of commentary around the legislation, to listen to concerns from those communities most affected by hate crime and to shape more effective messaging and engagement going forward. These reflections, highlighting positive practice and reaffirming the Act’s purpose and intention in protecting communities and tackling the harm caused by prejudice-motivated behaviour, has informed our approach to ensuring our communications about our work to tackle hatred and prejudice as well as the legislation are accessible and transparent. This is an ongoing commitment.

Information on hate crime data, post-implementation of new legislation, can be found in Action 8.

What are the next steps?

At the time of writing, the Scottish Government has recently laid in Parliament a Scottish Statutory Instrument (SSI)^[5] to include sex as a characteristic within the Act. If passed, the SSI will enable the creation of two new criminal law protections for women and girls, as well as men and boys, because of their sex. These are the new characteristic of stirring up hatred based on the characteristic of sex, and a statutory aggravation for offences motivated by prejudice related to the characteristic of sex. Women and girls will have greater protection against hate crimes under this legislation, as we know that women and girls suffer significantly more from threats, abuse, and harassment based on their sex, so are likely to benefit most from the new protections.

Action 3

Police Scotland will seek views from communities and stakeholders to ensure that the Police Scotland response to hate crime is both consistent and effective.

During development of the Hate Crime Strategy and its associated Delivery Plan, lived experience engagement highlighted that some communities did not feel comfortable engaging with police for a range of reasons.

What has been delivered?

Police Scotland have re-designed their approach to user experience monitoring for hate crimes and incidents reported, in order to standardise the process. Everyone who reports a hate crime or incident to Police Scotland, and who has a mobile number logged on their contact system, receives an SMS invite to take part in the survey each month.

Police Scotland have also undertaken a range of activity with young people affected by hate to understand their needs and experiences, including:

• launch of new Young Scot Safety platform in collaboration with Young Scot. Young creator content on experience of hate crime shared on social media.
• community work with minoritised groups, for example Intercultural Youth Scotland, to facilitate meaningful and practical insight/engagement sessions to understand needs and experiences in greater detail
• delivery of training and awareness inputs to School Based Officers to ensure they are equipped and supported in delivery of their role in schools in support of young people.

In 2025, Police Scotland established the Community Relationship Specialist (CRS) role within the national Policing Together Division. The CRS function operates at the intersection of prevention, trust-building, inclusion, and organisational learning and contributes to strengthening public confidence and legitimacy, preventing harm, and promoting fairness and equity in policing.

Since the introduction of the role, CRS has engaged with a wide range of minoritised communities across Scotland, including Black and African, Muslim, Jewish, Sikh, Hindu, Gypsy, Traveller and Roma, Central and Eastern European, and asylum seeker communities. Engagement has focused particularly on communities disproportionately affected by rising levels of racism, hate crime, and misinformation, alongside ongoing challenges relating to migration, asylum, and heightened public scrutiny of policing practices. These engagements have provided valuable insight into how hate crime impacts communities and how Police Scotland’s response can be strengthened to ensure greater consistency and effectiveness. Key learning from community conversations includes:

• Limited awareness of hate crime: Many communities reported a lack of understanding of what constitutes hate crime and/or hate incident, and how they differ. Many also noted they do not know how to report such crimes or incidents, available victim support options, and what to expect from follow-up procedures. Sometimes the communities feel that the follow-ups take a long time, and they do not hear from Police Scotland promptly enough. Also, some of the community members questioned their reports (“why should I report? I do not know whether something was done or not in my case, I haven’t heard anything after reporting”).
• Racism in schools: Communities highlighted increasing concerns about racism in schools across multiple divisions. These experiences have significant long-term impacts not only on children but also on parents, families, and wider communities. Communities noted that there needs to be a multidisciplinary approach involving key stakeholders at the right levels where decisions and policies are made.
• Need for meaningful dialogue: Communities emphasised the importance of sustained, trust-based engagement with Police Scotland to build confidence in reporting hate crime. Equally, officers and staff would benefit from improved understanding of cultural differences that may act as barriers to reporting or seeking support.

In addition, the LGBTQI+ Police Scotland Citizens’ Panel was commissioned by Police Scotland and is an example of a ‘deliberative’ process aiming to meaningfully engage with diverse citizens on challenging issues. The panel ran from January to April 2025 and convened to answer the question ‘what does Police Scotland need to do to build greater trust and confidence amongst LGBTQI+ people?’. There were 27 panellists, aged 20-68 and met for a total of 25 hours across 10 online evening sessions. The panel produced 16 recommendations covering training and education, transparency, trust, accountability, community engagement and visibility, internal police culture and feeling safe, seen and welcome during interactions with the police.

Police Scotland also launched a Community Engagement App in 2025, which allows officers and staff to record details of community engagement visits to help strengthen trust with minoritised communities and help to identify and respond to community-specific issues.

What are the next steps?

The CRSs will continue to undertake sustained engagement with minoritised communities to improve awareness of hate crime/incident, reporting routes and victim support options. Officers encouraged to strengthen the follow-up processes, ensuring victims are fully informed about outcomes. The CRSs will continue working in partnership with the Scottish Government, Local Authorities, COSLA, public bodies, third-sector organisations, and minoritised communities themselves. This will promote collaboration, better understanding of challenges and actions to address these thereby helping to build trust.

These community insights and the work of CRSs will continually inform trauma-informed, and culturally competent responses to hate crimes across all divisions as well as wider policy and decision-making, resource rotation and communications/engagements.

Action 4

Police Scotland, with Scottish Government and Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group members, will undertake a review of third-party reporting.

The Scottish Government’s Hate Crime Strategy Delivery plan released in November 2023 prioritised reviewing third-party reporting (TPR) by April 2026 in partnership with Police Scotland.

Third party reporting allows you to report an incident without contacting the police directly. There are third party reporting centres across Scotland, ranging from housing associations to victim support offices and voluntary groups, where trained staff will provide support and assistance in submitting a report to Police Scotland on your behalf.

What has been delivered?

An initial short-life working group was established in 2023 to progress this review, but the implementation of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act in April 2024 sparked debate, and amplified misunderstandings about TPR and issues such as outdated facility lists, that services were not operating as effectively as they could be, and safeguarding concerns for both centres and victims.

To strengthen the supportive element of TPR and explore options around reforming the TPR interface, enhancing services and centralised training and support for centres, Scottish Government and Police Scotland engaged Victim Support Scotland in late-2024, as well as NEC Design – a service design company in May 2025.

NEC Design undertook a range of research to build their understanding of the TPR landscape in Scotland, including lived experience engagement with existing centres, victims of hate crime across a range of protected characteristics and stakeholders. In partnership with YouthLink Scotland, a further session with a group of young people took place. Additionally, a range of organisations provided feedback throughout the process, including Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group members (the Equality Network, BEMIS, CEMVO, Interfaith Scotland, YouthLink Scotland, respectme, and Equality and Human Rights Commission).

Using the insights from the review, NEC Design presented findings to strengthen a national approach to hate crime support, reporting and awareness.

What are the next steps?

Using these recommendations as a guideline for what can be achieved within existing structures, budgets and resources, Police Scotland and Victim Support Scotland are working collaboratively to undertake short-term delivery, including re-engaging TPR centres, providing an opportunity to recommit to their TPR status as well as a platform for the sharing of best practice between centres and ease of signposting to ensure a victim centred approach.

The content of the Victim Support Scotland Hate Crime Toolkit has recently been updated, which will be published on the Victim Support Scotland site. Police Scotland will also work with Victim Support Scotland to provide updated guidance for centres, including roles and responsibilities.

Police Scotland, Victim Support Scotland and the Scottish Government will work collaboratively to use the recommendations as a guide for what can be achieved in the longer-term. We will involve a range of organisations and communities in this process.

Action 5

Scottish Government with Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group partners will undertake a review of the barriers to reporting.

As we developed the Hate Crime Strategy, we heard from communities about a number of barriers to reporting hate crime. The Delivery Plan committed to bringing these together, to help us deepen our understanding and start to identify activity to address them.

What has been delivered?

Through the Scottish Graduate Scheme of Social Science (SGSSS), two research interns worked with the Scottish Government’s Justice Analysis and Strategy division in 2023 and 2024 to review evidence in relation to understanding and laterally tackling the barriers to reporting hate crime. The findings have been compiled in a report, ‘Understanding and Tackling Barriers to Reporting Hate Crime: Evidence review’, which was published by Scottish Government on 17 February 2026.

The report draws on a variety of qualitative and quantitative evidence sources, including reports published by the Scottish Government, other public and third-sector publications, and academic journal articles. Researchers also engaged with and shared early findings with members of the Hate Crime Strategic Partnership Group.

The report presents a summary of key findings and themes to address the following questions:

• What are the main barriers to reporting hate crime?
• What does the evidence tell us about effective approaches to tackle these barriers?

The review identifies and examines five key barriers to reporting hate crime:

1. Lack of awareness – not everyone is aware of what hate crime is and how to report it

2. Perceptions of the police and justice system – some people do not think that the police will take their complaint seriously

3. Perception that the offence is not serious enough or is commonplace - some people may believe that incidents are ‘not serious enough’ to be reported or occur too frequently to report it each time

4. Ongoing impacts of hate crime – for instance, the risk of reprisals from the perpetrator or others learning information about the victim that they don’t wish to be wider knowledge

5. Accessibility and language barriers – reporting options available may not be suited to some communication or accessibility needs to enable people to report

The report also sets out examples of key strategies and approaches which evidence suggests can be effective for tackling these barriers, including (but not limited to) hate crime awareness raising campaigns, alternative means to reporting hate crime, victim support and educational workshops.

What are the next steps?

The Scottish Government and partners will continue to consider and apply the findings of this analysis in the ongoing development of approaches to addressing barriers to the reporting hate crime. This reflective and iterative approach will ensure that our interventions are responsive to the evidence, including addressing: limited awareness of what constitutes hate crime and how incidents can be reported; experiences and perceptions of policing and public authorities, including issues of trust and confidence; the normalisation or perceived low seriousness of certain incidents; concerns that reporting may lead to adverse consequences, such as reprisals or unwanted disclosure of personal information; and accessibility and language barriers that may prevent some individuals from engaging effectively with existing reporting mechanisms.