New figures have revealed there has been a four per cent increase in the number of charges with at least one element of hate crime in the last year.
Lord Advocate James Wolffe QC, who is soon to leave the position, said that Scottish prosecutors are "committed" to tackling crime motivated by hatred following the news, and vowed a robust approach would be taken from the Crown Office and Procurator Fiscal Service (COPFS) to help victims.
The report on hate crime in Scotland 2020-21 which was published on Friday, shows the total number of charges reported to COPFS containing at least one element of hate crime increased to 5,525 in 2020-21, 4% more than 2019-20.
While the majority of hate crime charges contained a racial element, the proportion of race crime has decreased in the last decade from the peak 75% in 2011-12 (4,547) to 59% in 2020-21 (3,285).
But last year saw a 6% increase in race crimes compared to 2019-20.
Mr Wolffe said: “Scottish prosecutors are committed to tackling crimes motivated by hatred and prejudice.
“Any victim of such offending should come forward and report it to the appropriate authorities.
“They can be confident that prosecutors will continue to respond to any such report robustly, appropriately and fairly.
“These crimes do not only affect individual victims; they have far reaching consequences for society as a whole.
“No-one should be targeted because of their race, religion, disability, transgender identity or sexual orientation and the Crown takes seriously its responsibility to protect the public from such offending.”
The number of charges reported with a sexual orientation aggravation increased by 5% in 2020-21 to 1,580, with the proportion of these increasing from 11% to 29% in the same decade.
One fewer aggravation of transgender identity was reported in 2020-21 (46) compared to 47 last year.
Religious aggravation charges also dropped 14% in the last year with 573 incidents recorded in the 2020-21 report.
But the number of disability-aggravated charges increased by 14% to 448 in 2020-21.
READ MORE: 'Strong case' for abolishing Scotland's not proven verdict
Justice Secretary Keith Brown said: “We recognise that hate crime has a hugely damaging effect on victims, their families and communities and we all must play our part to challenge it.
“These figures show there is more to do to tackle hatred and prejudice in Scotland and we will continue our work to ensure it will not be tolerated.
“As we press ahead with the development of our new hate crime strategy, which will include implementation of the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021, we will consider how we can continue to raise awareness and encourage reporting.
“We will also consider how to more effectively break down barriers to reporting.
“It is important that we continue to take steps to tackle hate crime, continue to raise awareness and work to reassure communities that we are doing everything we can to prevent hate crime in all its forms.
“Anyone who experiences or witnesses a hate crime should report it to the police or via a third party reporting centre.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereLast Updated:
Report this comment Cancel