The breakdown by police forces of the proportion of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by officers in the last 12 months to September 2018 which were assigned the outcome of “investigation complete – no suspect identified”, is concerning.
The figures are from police-recorded crime data for England and Wales published by the Home Office and cover five types of offences, all of which have a specific racially or religiously motivated element defined by statute. According to the Home Office, “these racially or religiously aggravated offences are by definition hate crimes”.
The five offences are:
– Racially or religiously aggravated assault with injury
– Racially or religiously aggravated assault without injury
– Racially or religiously aggravated harassment
– Racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage
– Racially or religiously aggravated public fear, alarm or distress
The list reads, from left to right: name of police force, the number of racially or religiously aggravated offences recorded by police in the 12 months to September 2018, the number of these recorded offences assigned the outcome “investigation complete – no suspect identified”, and this number expressed as a percentage.
Speaking about these figures, the Director of Tell MAMA, Iman Atta OBE, said:
“These figures are concerning and may indicate that online investigations do not lead very far because of the difficulty of identifying perpetrators. It may also indicate a lack of evidence in some cases, though what is concerning is that public confidence may well be affected over time and we know that trust in getting outcomes falls. This has a corrosive effect in public confidence in the long term”.
Rankings By Percentage
The list is ranked by percentage, starting with the highest.
Greater Manchester: 5,199 2,385 46%
West Midlands: 3,405 1,496 44%
British Transport Police: 2,619 968 37%
Northumbria: 1,269 421 33%
Sussex: 1,076 338 31%
Lancashire: 1,553 474 31%
Thames Valley: 1,666 484 29%
West Yorkshire: 4,458 1,292 29%
Humberside: 549 151 28%
Gloucestershire: 233 64 27%
Merseyside: 1,613 442 27%
Metropolitan Police: 11,915 3,214 27%
Nottinghamshire: 771 206 27%
South Yorkshire: 1,191 318 27%
South Wales: 924 245 27%
Durham: 369 89 24%
Cleveland: 621 148 24%
Avon and Somerset: 1,634 380 23%
Hertfordshire: 1,006 231 23%
Cambridgeshire: 686 157 23%
Leicestershire: 731 167 23%
Essex: 1,219 276 23%
Suffolk: 434 94 22%
Devon and Cornwall: 815 173 21%
Hampshire: 1,563 328 21%
Wiltshire: 410 84 20%
Surrey: 1,085 222 20%
Northamptonshire: 457 93 20%
Kent: 1,787 361 20%
Cheshire: 792 159 20%
Dorset: 338 67 20%
Dyfed-Powys: 147 29 20%
Warwickshire: 412 78 19%
Norfolk: 411 74 18%
Derbyshire: 510 89 17%
Cumbria: 217 37 17%
Bedfordshire: 607 99 16%
Lincolnshire: 260 41 16%
North Wales: 354 55 16%
Staffordshire: 962 149 15%
Gwent: 373 57 15%
City of London: 109 15 14%
West Mercia: 633 86 14%
North Yorkshire: 269 11 4%