Disability Hate Crime prosecutions
Freedom of Information request
Re: Disability hate crime
I am writing to make a request for all the information to which I am entitled under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.
Could you please supply me with the following information concerning disability hate crime, as outlined below.
- How many individuals were prosecuted for the offence of disability hate crime by CPS in 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/2020, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23
- How many cases of disability hate crime were dropped by the CPS in the yearly totals mentioned in question one?
- Would you be able to provide a yearly breakdown of the reason(s) for charges being dropped in cases regarding disability hate crime in the yearly totals mentioned in question one?
Response
The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) holds information pertaining to defendants prosecuted with an offence considered to be a Hate Crime on the basis of disability, in its Disability Hate Crime flagged data held up to September 2022 in line with the CPS’ publication policy.
This data, which includes the number of defendants prosecuted with Disability Hate Crime flagged offences, that did and did not lead to conviction and reasons why prosecutions were dropped, can be found in the tables below and should be read in conjunction with the caveats appended to it.
Under section 16 of the FOIA we have a duty to advise what, if any, information would assist with your request. A link to the CPS’ quarterly data summaries, where the publication of the next Disability Hate Crime dataset is due around the 20 April 2023, can be found in the Quarterly Data Summaries section of our website.
| England & Wales - CPS Disability Hate Crime Prosecutions | 2017-2018 | 2018-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 | April - September 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Convictions | 564 | 419 | 292 | 236 | 273 | 118 |
| Non-Convictions | 188 | 160 | 68 | 56 | 72 | 33 |
| Prosecutions Dropped | 108 | 92 | 34 | 35 | 37 | 18 |
| England & Wales - Reasons for Disability Hate Crime Prosecution Dropped Outcomes | 2017-2018 | 2017-2019 | 2019-2020 | 2020-2021 | 2021-2022 | April - September 2022 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Acquitted/Dismissed after Trial | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Administratively Finalised | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Complainant or Witness Issues | 50 | 52 | 14 | 16 | 17 | 8 |
| Disclosure - undermining unused material | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| Evidential | 44 | 37 | 12 | 11 | 12 | 3 |
| Public Interest | 13 | 2 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 6 |
| Other | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
Caveats and definitions
To avoid any misunderstanding when interpreting the data provided in response to your request we would like to highlight that the volumes have been impacted due to court closures and recovery during Covid-19 from Mid-March to the end of June 2020.
Prosecution Caveats
The counting unit for CPS records is the defendant in a case, as opposed to the number of offences, or the number of cases. Thus, if a single set of proceedings involves more than one defendant, then each defendant is counted, and the outcome is recorded for each defendant.
- Convictions comprise guilty pleas, convictions after trial and proceedings which are proved in absence.
- Non-Conviction Outcomes comprise prosecutions dropped, administrative finalisations, discharged committals and cases acquitted or dismissed following a contested hearing.
- Prosecutions dropped: these represent all cases in which the CPS decided to drop proceedings before evidence was heard by the court. Included here are cases discontinued s23 Prosecution of Offences Act 1985, cases withdrawn at court, those in which no evidence was offered, and those in which either the prosecution or the indictment was stayed.
- A reason explaining why the case failed is allocated to all cases resulting in an outcome other than a conviction. If more than one reason applies the principal reason is selected.
Flagging
- The CPS define Disability Hate Crime as any incident which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards a person because of their disability or perceived disability.
- CPS disability hate crime statistics are dependent upon lawyers and administrative staff identifying applicable cases and flagging the case on the Case Management System. These data are accurate only to the extent that flags have been correctly applied.
- Monitoring flags are applied at case level. The flag may apply to only one defendant (in cases where a number of defendants are prosecuted together) and equally may apply to only one offence a defendant is charged with (if a defendant is charged with more than one offence). It is not possible, other than by manually examining CPS case files, to say whether the flagged defendant was prosecuted for or convicted of offences involving disability hate crime or not.
General Data Caveats
- CPS data are available through its Case Management System (CMS) and associated Management Information System (MIS). The CPS collects data to assist in the effective management of its prosecution functions. The CPS does not collect data that constitutes official statistics as defined in the Statistics and Registration Service Act 2007.
- These data have been drawn from the CPS’s administrative IT system, which (as with any large scale recording system) is subject to possible errors with data entry and processing. The figures are provisional and subject to change as more information is recorded by the CPS. We are committed to improving the quality of our data and from mid-June 2015 introduced a new data assurance regime which may explain some unexpected variance in some future data sets.
- The official statistics relating to crime and policing are maintained by the Home Office (HO) and the official statistics relating to sentencing, criminal court proceedings, offenders brought to justice, the courts and the judiciary are maintained by the Ministry of Justice (MOJ).