Disability Hate Crime - 422/23

Provision of information held by Northumbria Police made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000 (the 'Act')

As you may be aware the purpose of the Act is to allow a general right of access to information held at the time of a request, by a Public Authority (including the Police), subject to certain limitations and exemptions.

You asked:

Could you please supply me with the following information concerning disability hate crime, as outlined below.

1. How many disability hate crimes have been recorded by your police force in 2017/18, 2018/19, 2019/2020, 2020/21, 2021/22, 2022/23

2. Regarding the yearly totals mentioned in question one, what was the total number of cases in which the victim was:
Under 16
16-17
18-25
26-40
41-60
Over 60

3. How many of the recorded incidents of disability hate crimes in the yearly totals mentioned in question one concerned acts of violence against a person?

4. How many of the recorded incidents of disability hate crimes in the yearly totals mentioned in question one took place online?

5. If recorded, please state the total number of disability hate crime cases carried out in/around school property (please include all educational establishments from early years to FE colleges).

6. Please state the total number of disability hate crime cases carried out in/around university property.

In Response:

We have now had the opportunity to fully consider your request and I provide a response for your attention.

Following receipt of your request, searches were conducted with the Corporate Development Department of Northumbria Police. I can confirm that the information you have requested is held in part by Northumbria Police.

I am able to disclose the located information to you with all the caveats below noted.

• Every effort is made to ensure that the figures presented are accurate and complete. However, it is important to note that these data have been extracted from a number of data sources used by forces for police purposes. The detail collected to respond specifically to your request is subject to the inaccuracies inherent in any large scale recording system. As a consequence, care should be taken to ensure data collection processes and their inevitable limitations are taken into account when interpreting those data.

• The figures provided therefore are our best interpretation of relevance of data to your request, but you should be aware that the collation of figures for ad hoc requests may have limitations and this should be taken into account when those data are used.

• There are a number of offences where the victim data is not available, i.e. the offence has been reported by a third party who does not know the identity of the victim.

• To find those offences are 'online' we have used the cyber flag in method/means.

• To find those offences that were recorded with a location of school, we have used the location of 'school premises' or 'classroom'

• We can only include those properties that have been recorded with a location of 'University', we do not have a list of all the properties that are owned by the universities.

With all the above noted we respond as attached.