Is there a technical/legal difference between hate crimes and crimes committed against protected characteristics?

[rosablue]

Just wondering - is a hate crime related to the protected characteristics or is it something slightly different?

Just had a post from the local police (Thames Valley) flash up on my facebook about hate crimes and hidden crimes - in which there's an info graphic that says:
'A hate crime is any crime perceived to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person's:
Race, Religion, Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, Disability

This list is very similar to but obviously different from the list of protected characteristics in the Equality Act.

I've also just spotted the thread on why people are saying gender rather than sex is a protected characteristic.

Made me wonder if the Police are trying to do a nice simple infographic and have had advice from those helpful peeps at somewhere like Mermaids or Stonewall who have 'interpreted' the list for them, or if it is an individual designer who just made something to fit into the space available or if they have deliberately decided to only focus on some hate crime while ignoring the rest or if there is a separate list somewhere...

I was about to post a comment but thought I had better check my facts first! Just in case there is a slightly different legal definition of hate crime to crimes committed against people with protected characteristics...

Hope that makes sense. Thanks in advance!

Citizens Advice have a nice clear descriton;
www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/discrimination/hate-crime/what-are-hate-incidents-and-hate-crime/

''Hate incidents and hate crime are acts of violence or hostility directed at people because of who they are or who someone thinks they are.''

disability
race
religion
transgender identity
sexual orientation.

''Anyone can be the victim of a hate incident. For example, you may have been targeted because someone thought you were gay even though you’re not, or because you have a disabled child.''

For some reason, sex is not grounds for a hate incident or hate crime even though it is a protected characteristic.

Maybe it's a pragmatic 'exclusion'?
After all, if women were able to report all the violence, aggression, discrimination on the basis of our biology, doxxing, hate speech and hostility, the whole thing would grind to a halt.

Maybe it's a pragmatic 'exclusion'?

yup

Sex is not considered as a characteristic for Hate Crime legislation. Recent discussion on making mysoginy a Hate Crime Victoria Atkins Women's Minister said
'For example, there are high rates of under-reporting of the existing five strands of hate crime. We would not want to remove the focus from them, because we want to encourage more people to report that they have been abused racially or because of their religion.' At the moment we have no clear evidence to show the extent to which the range of crimes committed against women and girls are specifically motivated by misogyny, which is defined as
“the dislike of, contempt for, or ingrained prejudice against women.”'
and
'I am treading carefully at the moment with respect to equalities legislation because, as far as inserting anything into the current hate crime provisions is concerned, there are legal wrangles that we have to consider. We want to ensure that any changes that we make in the law to reflect the abuse in question would not have any impact on the five protected strands—of religion, and so on.'
Women apparently are not a minority so are fair game.

Maybe it's a pragmatic 'exclusion'

Which is utter bullshit given the new stats coming out every day about what women and girls go through every day in the UK.

It's really shitty to say hate crimes against women are so endemic that we aren't going to try and do anything about them

My cynical head remembers that women no longer get cheaper car insurance due to their statistical lower risk because it wasn't fair on the poor men who had to pay more.

'Protected characteristics' are a feature of the Equality Act. The Equality Act is a civil law; leading to civil actions at tribunals etc, and restitution in the form of compensation and/or directions.

The criminal law focuses on the perpetrator and the perpetrator's motivation in three areas:
- racially and religiously aggravated;
- homophobic, biphobic and transphobic;
- disability

When it is proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that the perpetrator was motivated by one of the above, then the Crown Prosecutors can apply for a longer sentence.

(sections 28-32 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 and sections 145 and 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003)

For those unhappy that misogyny is not recorded as a hate crime, you might want to take a look at this link from the Fawcett Society.

The reason misogyny isn't included as one of the five monitored hate crimes is because a decision was taken to focus on the Violence Against Women and Girls (VAWG) Strategy as a means of tackling maltreatment of women.

As has been mentioned on a different thread, it is possible to argue that this places female victims in the passive role - viewing violence as something that happens to them rather than explicitly focusing on who is responsible for perpetrating it.

Conversely, it is possible to argue that recording misogyny (also sometimes referred to as gender-based hate in some areas) as a hate crime will be more likely to:

1. Throw focus on who is perpetrating the violence.
2. Allow better monitoring of trends by police forces/CPS (and therefore government).
3. Result in the ability to uplift sentences
4. Send a very clear message to wider society that although they are commonplace, sexism and misogyny are wrong and as unacceptable as racism, etc.

The exclusion of misogyny as a hate crime is currently subject to review. A (very) small number of police forces are trialling it. The key point the government wants to know, as it does with the other monitored hate crime strands, is what benefit there will be to victims and to crime reduction if misogyny is dealt with in this way as opposed to the current way (i.e. the VAWG strategy).

According to twitter

No, but the word is too specific in that by definition it only covers women. Even disregarding the issue of identical abuse to males, it makes cases more complex where the victim is transgender, non-binary or even transvestite - does it apply or not.

Thanks everyone for the explanations - it's been really interesting and I've learnt lots.

Silly me for assuming that hate crimes would be based on the equality legislation protected characteristics - seems that would be too simple and that obviously heaven forfend that doing anything bad to women should be a hate crime... once again the women get overlooked.

Might see if I can phrase a question to ask why women aren't included to see what they say...

Thanks again - I knew you wise vipers would have the answers for me