NIACRO has joined with the Prison Service to carry out a three-year project to tackle this particularly insidious form of crime.
Hate crime legislation became law in Northern Ireland in September 2004. Sentencing now has to take into account the fact that an offence is aggravated by hostility based on religion, race, sexual orientation or disability.
Being a victim of hate crime is a particularly painful experience. It also hurts communities, arousing suspicion and alienation. We need to understand where its roots are, and how communities can make it clear that they don’t accept it.
PSNI statistics for 2009-2010 recorded 1264 hate crimes with a motivation of hostility on the grounds of sectarianism, the biggest group. They were followed by race (712) and homophobia (112). It is generally accepted that hate crime is under-recorded.
NIACRO has engaged with this subject for several years.
- Between 2004 and 2006, in a European project working to reduce hate crime, with colleagues in London, Germany, Bulgaria and Malta.
- This work resulted in the 2006 report “Hate crime and adjudicated offenders – challenging the perpetrators: models of practice”.
- Later, we hosted a seminar building on these relationships and comparing the situation in Northern Ireland with the effects on Muslim communities in Great Britain of the “war on terror”.
Challenging
Now NIACRO has joined with the NI Prison Service to carry out a new three-year project, Challenge Hate Crime, with the goal of reducing hate crime through intensive support for people who have committed this sort of offence. Working to achieve this goal will include:
- improving the level of debate and understanding around hate crime (especially when motivated by sectarianism),
- developing a definition of sectarian hate crime
- extending the debate beyond the criminal justice system,
- designing and piloting a workable, effective model of helping offenders – in custody and in the community - tackle their offending,
- increasing the skills of those working with offenders,
- sharing the learning through seminars and publications.
The project will contribute to what NIACRO has been insisting on for many years, and is now becoming accepted – effective joint working among all the relevant organisations, both inside and outside the criminal justice system.
Challenge Hate Crime, funded under Peace III, has two phases, the first of which is underway. We have established two linked advisory groups, the Research Advisory Group (RAG) and the Practice Advisory Group (PAG). They will research, then develop and deliver, a programme to help offenders change their behaviour. We aim to make this a model of good practice.
Contact: Monica Fitzpatrick
Research Manager
Tel – 02890320157 (ext 250)
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