Hate crime: the only way is Essex

With abuse of disabled people once more making the headlines, Faye Savage describes how one disabled people’s organisation has tapped its members lived experience to get at the facts on hate crime

Essex Coalition of Disabled People’s (ECDP) major report on disability hate crime, published after the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) report, into events leading to the deaths of Fiona Pilkington and her daughter, was based on twelve months’ research with disabled people and organisations in Essex. The report thus set out what we know about disability hate crime, based on what our members told us about such cases; many of which go unnoticed, unaddressed or unreported.

We now know that disability hate crime is an issue that affects disabled people with all impairments, of all ages and in all areas, in a number of very serious ways. However, the issues surrounding it are often not understood, either by the victims themselves or the agencies involved in supporting them.

We know that education around disability hate crime is too often aimed at changing the behaviour of the victim and not at supporting them to understand that they are entitled to challenge the behaviour of the perpetrator. People often talk about no longer going out on their own at particular times or to places where they feel they are likely to be unsafe.

Statutory and community organisations – and especially those facing financial difficulty in a challenging climate – address hate crime sporadically, and are inconsistent in their approach to supporting disabled people when they become victims.

Clearly, the police play an important role in tackling hate crime, but as the Pilkington case demonstrates, other agencies and organisations also play an important part.

Some barriers to reporting hate crime reflect the barriers which disabled people face elsewhere in their lives. Others relate to the complex power relationships disabled people sometimes live within. What if the crime is committed by someone you are dependent on to support you? Or a family member?

The key recommendations made in ECDP’s report and informed by this lived experience, look towards bridging the gap between the things we know about the realities many disabled people face and the things we know disabled people want to see being done – greater understanding, better signposting and support, wider education and increased reporting – centrally coordinated and therefore simple to navigate for the individual.

Approaching this issue from a local, user-led disabled people’s organisation perspective enables work to be based on the expertise that comes with lived experience. We can realistically create a system where disabled people and society more widely understand hate crime and tackle it efficiently and consistently when it happens.

With retrospect it is easy to see how society has failed those disabled people who make headlines once it is too late to prevent them being there. An approach which works with disabled people to holistically address disability hate crime both before and when it happens, will prevent the cases which make the headlines – as well as those which don’t.