Hate Crime Statistics
This briefing paper looks at Hate Crime in England & Wales using figures provided by the Crime Survey of England and Wales (CSEW) and the Police Recorded Crime Series. The paper also presents data on hate crime rates per 100,000 population in each police force area and for each hate crime strand. It also looks at similar figures in Scotland and Northern Ireland.
Police recorded crime figures in 2022/23 show that there were 145,214 offences where one or more of the centrally monitored hate crime strands were deemed to be a motivating factor. This represented a 5% decrease on figures for 2021/22. These figures do not include Devon and Cornwall police force who did not provide data this year due to the implementation of a new IT system.
The increase in police recorded hate crime over time prior to this year has partly been attributed to better recording methods used and greater awareness in reporting hate crimes.
Hate Crime since 2015
Since April 2015, there have been spikes for racial or religiously aggravated offences not matched by their non-aggravated equivalent at the time of the EU referendum, 2017 terrorist attacks and 2020 Black Lives Matter protests. Though there were similar spikes in the following and preceding summers, the trends were similar for the two types of offences.
Police Force Area DataThe highest rate of hate crimes for all offences recorded by the police per 100,000 population in 2022/23 was in the West Yorkshire police force force area (441).The lowest rate was found in Dorset (103).