Disability hate crime is hate crime

Hate crime

In crime and law, hate crimes occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, class, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, social status or...

 arising from the hostility of the perpetrator towards the disability

Disability

A disability may be physical, cognitive, mental, sensory, emotional, developmental or some combination of these.Many people would rather be referred to as a person with a disability instead of handicapped...

, or perceived disability, of the victim, or because of their perceived connection to disability. It represents Disablism carried through into criminal acts against the person.

Forms of Disability Hate Crime

Disability hate crime can take many forms, from verbal abuse and intimidatory behaviour to vandalism

Vandalism

Vandalism is the behaviour attributed originally to the Vandals, by the Romans, in respect of culture: ruthless destruction or spoiling of anything beautiful or venerable...

, assault

Assault

In law, assault is a crime causing a victim to fear violence. The term is often confused with battery, which involves physical contact. The specific meaning of assault varies between countries, but can refer to an act that causes another to apprehend immediate and personal violence, or in the more...

, or even murder

Murder

Murder is the unlawful killing, with malice aforethought, of another human being, and generally this state of mind distinguishes murder from other forms of unlawful homicide...

. Disability hate crimes may be one-off incidents, or systematic abuse that may continue over periods of weeks, months or even years. Disability hate crime may occur between strangers who have never met, between acquaintances or within the family.

Recognition of Disability Hate Crime

Disability hate crime is currently one of the least recognised forms of hate crime. Sir Ken Macdonald, QC, the then Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales

Director of Public Prosecutions (England and Wales)

The Director of Public Prosecutions of England and Wales is a senior prosecutor, appointed by the Attorney General. First created in 1879, the office was unified with that of the Treasury Solicitor less than a decade later before again becoming independent in 1908...

 stated in a speech to the Bar Council

Bar council

A bar council , in a Commonwealth country and in the Republic of Ireland, the Bar Council of Ireland is a professional body that regulates the profession of barristers together with the King's Inns. Solicitors are generally regulated by the Law society....

 in October 2008 that "I am on record as saying that it is my sense that disability hate crime is very widespread. I have said that it is my view that at the lower end of the spectrum there is a vast amount not being picked up. I have also expressed the view that the more serious disability hate crimes are not always being prosecuted as they should be. This is a scar on the conscience of criminal justice. And all bodies and all institutions involved in the delivery of justice, including my own, share the responsibility."

Legal Status of Disability Hate Crime

In the United States, the Matthew Shepard Act

Matthew Shepard Act

The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, also known as the Matthew Shepard Act, is an American Act of Congress, passed on October 22, 2009, and signed into law by President Barack Obama on October 28, 2009, as a rider to the National Defense Authorization Act for 2010...

, expanded the 1969 United States federal hate-crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived disability.

In the UK

United Kingdom

The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

, disability hate crime is regarded as an aggravating factor under Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003

Criminal Justice Act 2003

The Criminal Justice Act 2003 is an Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It is a wide ranging measure introduced to modernise many areas of the criminal justice system in England and Wales and, to a lesser extent, in Scotland and Northern Ireland....

, allowing a heavier tariff to be used in sentencing than the crime might draw without the hate elements. Section 146 states that the sentencing provisions apply if: that, at the time of committing the offence, or immediately before or after doing so, the offender demonstrated towards the victim of the offence hostility based on—

(i) the sexual orientation (or presumed sexual orientation) of the victim, or

(ii) a disability (or presumed disability) of the victim, or that the offence is motivated (wholly or partly)—

(i) by hostility towards persons who are of a particular sexual orientation, or

(ii) by hostility towards persons who have a disability or a particular disability.^ Sections 145 and 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003

The test in Section 146 is deliberately one for evidence of 'hostility' rather than 'hatred' as the seriousness of the offence was considered to justify the application of a less-strict test.

Disability Hate Crime and Crime Recording

The historical failure of police forces, prosecutors and some social care organizations to treat Disability Hate Crime as a serious issue, an echo of previous failures over other forms of hate crime, particularly racial and LGBT-focused hate crimes, has led to chronic under-reporting. This under-reporting is both pre-emptive, through a widespread belief within the disabled community that they will not be treated seriously by law enforcement, and post-facto, where police forces investigate the crime as non hate-based and record it as such.

The UK Crown Prosecution Service's Annual Hate Crime Report, shows that 11,624 cases of racial or religious hate crime were prosecuted in England and Wales in 2009 with 10,690 leading to successful convictions. By contrast only 363 prosecutions and 299 convictions were for Disability Hate Crimes.

The UK charity Scope has conducted research into the prevalence and experience of Disability hate crime, summarizing their findings and those of other disability groups in the report Getting Away With Murder Katharine Quarmby, who wrote the report and was the first British journalist to investigate disability hate crime, has also written a book on the matter.

'Vulnerability'

Prosecution of disability hate crimes has faced problems caused by the predominant perception of disabled people as inherently 'vulnerable'. This is a multi-faceted issue. Unthinking application of the 'vulnerable' label to a disabled person is itself a form of infantilization, a widely recognised form of disablism in which disabled people are regarded, or disregarded, as child-like rather than as functioning adults with their own opinions. Secondly the use of the 'vulnerable' label frequently represents a failure to distinguish between the victim of the crime and the situation they found themselves facing. The CPS has found it necessary to issue guidance to its prosecutors reminding them that 'vulnerable' should only be used as a description of a person within the precise legal meaning of, for instance, section 16 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 Further to this, perceptions of 'vulnerability' can also lead to the perception that the victim is responsible for the crime, through reckless behaviour, rather than the perpetrator. For example a disabled person may be perceived as being engaged in risky behaviour by being out alone after dark. The parallels between this pattern of blame-shifting onto the victim and earlier manifestations of similar behaviour in the prosecution of rape and other sexual crimes are readily apparent.