To Combat Disability Hate Crime, We Must Understand Why People Commit It
After the Equality and Human Rights Commission 2011 report on disability hate crime, Hidden in Plain Sight, the government agreed to publish perpetrator analysis. Yet despite repeated requests it has not. So the Disability Hate Crime Network, a voluntary group campaigning against the crime, carried out a small, online survey of 100 disabled people last month to ask them more about the perpetrators of hate crimes. We asked about the gender, race and age of the attackers, location of the incident, whether the attacker acted alone or in a group, and about perceived motivation.
More than half of respondents (57%) said they were attacked on the street, and one-fifth on public transport. A quarter of incidents occurred at home. Other people were attacked in pubs and shops, with some mentioning social media. Perpetrators were overwhelmingly white.
Around half (49%) of all attacks were group based...