Reporting a hate crime or hate incident

Gender identity

What is 'Gender Identity'? The Oxford Dictionary definition of this is 'a person's perception of having a particular gender, which may or may not correspond with their birth sex.'

Transphobia is intolerance of gender diversity. It is based on the idea that there are only two sexes - male or female, which you stay in from birth. And furthermore, that people who fit gender stereotypes (by sounding, looking or behaving like men and women are 'supposed to') are somehow better than those who don't.

Trans people can also experience homophobia, because the abuser often neither knows nor cares how a person identifies, just that they are different in some way.

Galop has also produced a fact sheet on transphobia.

Sexual orientation

Sexual orientation refers to who a person is attracted to, this could be a person of the same gender, a different gender, or multiple genders.

If someone is violent or hostile towards another person because of their sexual orientation, this is known as a homophobic hate incident.

Race

Racism is a complex set of attitudes and behaviour towards people because of their ethnicity, skin colour or nationality.

Often this is based on:

• a belief or ideology that differences in physical/cultural characteristics (skin colour, language, dress, religious practices, etc.) dictate differences in personality, intelligence or ability, which lead to assumptions about racial superiority and inferiority.
• the social or economic power of members of one ethnic group to promote, enforce or 'act out' such attitudes (adapted definition from Stella Dadzie's book - Toolkit for Tackling Racism)

Racism comes in many forms and is not just about hate crimes or individual acts of discrimination; the most powerful forms of racism are those that are part of societal structures and influence our everyday assumptions, even appearing normal and unremarkable.

Racism includes a range of things we think (prejudices, assumptions, stereotyping, fears, beliefs, etc.) and what we do or say (discrimination, hate crimes, jokes, slurs, extremism).

Faith

Religious hate crimes and non-crime incidents are acts which target a victim because of the offender's hostility towards them or a group based on their faith, or lack of one.

The law does not protect our beliefs themselves, but it is based in human rights, meaning that we all have a right to hold our beliefs and to practice our faith in safety.

Anyone can be the victim of a religious hate incident. For example, someone may be targeted because of their partner's religion.

Another example of a religious or faith hate crime could be when a place of worship is attacked or when leaflets attacking another religion or faith are circulated publicly.

Disability

Disability hate crimes and non-crime incidents are acts which target a victim because of the offender's hostility to a disabled person or disabled people in general.

So any incident or crime which is perceived by the victim to be a disability hate crime will be recorded as such. Examples of hostility might include: abuse; name calling; blocking aisles and priority seating; removing equipment or even violence.

These are often different from other hate offences in that these might be perpetrated by friends, family members or carers. This factor also means that disability hate crimes are less likely to be reported (this information is part of a Disability Rights UK article, called Disability Hate Crime Network).