Home Secretary has today announced a new
national hub to tackle the emerging threat of online hate crime.
It will ensure better support for victims and help drive up the
number of prosecutions.
The hub, run by police officers for the National Police Chiefs
Council, will work to ensure online cases are managed effectively
and efficiently.
It will clearly set out the force responsible for further action
in each case, removing any uncertainty which could arise when,
for example, a victim is located in one area, with the alleged
perpetrator in another.
Specialist officers will provide expert case management and
better support and advice to victims of online hate crime. The
hub will ensure all online cases are properly investigated and
will help to increase prosecutions for online hate crimes.
The Home Secretary said:
“Online hate crime is completely unacceptable. What is illegal
offline is illegal online, and those who commit these cowardly
crimes should be met with the full force of the law.
“The national online hate crime hub that we are funding is an
important step to ensure more victims have the confidence to come
forward and report the vile abuse to which they are being
subjected.
“The hub will also improve our understanding of the scale and
nature of this despicable form of abuse. With the police, we will
use this new intelligence to adapt our response so that even more
victims are safeguarded and perpetrators punished.”
The hub’s primary aim is to improve the police response to the
problem of hate crime online. Following referral to the national
hub via Truevision, the police website to report hate crime,
individual complaints will be assessed, and relevant cases will
be assigned to the appropriate local force for investigation. As
such the hub will streamline and simplify current processes,
avoid duplication, make full use of expertise and reduce the
burden of online hate crime investigation on local forces.
Victims will be kept updated throughout, as police forces seek to
bring perpetrators to justice.
National Police Chiefs’ Council Lead for Hate Crime, Assistant
Chief Constable Mark Hamilton said:
“Whether online or in person, nobody should have to live with
threats and hatred because of who they are. Hateful abuse online
can leave victims with significant psychological harm, but can
also lead to more serious physical offences, so police need to be
able to intervene at the earliest possible stage to reassure
victims that we will act to protect them.
“This new national hub will enable a small team of specialist
officers to significantly improve the service we provide to
victims, reduce the burden on frontline officers, and help bring
more offenders to justice. We recognise and will uphold the right
to free speech even where it causes offence – but this does not
extend to inciting hatred or threatening people.
“Nobody should suffer in silence and we continue to urge people
to come forward and report hateful abuse to police so that we can
act to safeguard victims and investigate the perpetrators.”
The national online hate crime hub will:
· Assess whether the circumstances related to a crime or
non-crime incident;
· Combine duplicate reports;
· Seek to identify the perpetrator;
· Refer appropriate cases to online platforms hosting external
content, such as social media companies, so that hateful material
can be removed;
· Feed any intelligence into the wider National Intelligence
Model, the police data base which gathers intelligence on a wide
range of crimes, to guide policing strategies and inform forces’
priorities;
· Produce an evidence package for local recording and response
where there is a positive line of enquiry;
· Update the complainant with progress and explain where there is
no enforcement action possible; and
· Advise local police colleagues on effective responses. The hub
could develop and drive best practice through the network of hate
crime leads in individual forces.
It is expected to be operational before the end of the year.
NOTES TO EDITORS
1. Online hate crimes seek to attack an intrinsic part of who an
individual is or who they are perceived to be: their race,
religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity.
2. If you are a victim of hate crime you can report it on
Truevision www.report-it.org.uk/ Truevision is the website that
has been developed so that everyone can report hate crimes
online.
3. Sections 145 and 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 allow
for enhanced sentencing for any other crime where the victim's
race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity or
disability are motivating factors.
4. In summer 2016 we launched the Hate Crime Action Plan, setting
out the steps we will take to prevent hate crime in all its forms
and boost the reporting of offences and support to victims. The
Hate Crime Action Plan is available here.
5. The Crown Prosecution Service published the new public
statements on how it will prosecute hate crime and support
victims in England and Wales on 21st August 2017.
6. Official hate crime statistics are published by the Home
Office each October. The next set of statistics will be published
on 17th October. The last set can be found here.
