Brent case sparks outcry

It has been a very busy month for our disability hate crime campaign. By Katharine Quarmby

We are all mourning the death of Brent Martin (pictured), who was viciously murdered in August last year. He was on the cusp of a new, independent life. He had a flat of his own, a job and a girlfriend. Instead of being able to enjoy life to the full, he was killed for a bet.

The murder of Mr Martin sparked both a national and international outcry. The BBC 10 O’Clock News covered the end of the trial, linking it to our campaign and highlighting the dossier of crimes that we had compiled just before Christmas. The Independent newspaper followed suit, highlighting our work.

A number of disabled people’s organisations and disability charities are now working together informally on disability hate crime, sharing information and discussing how best to move forward in influencing government, police and prosecutors to take disability hate crime more seriously.

\More evidence emerged about the shocking level of violence experienced by blind people. A survey by Action for Blind People, published in January,
found that blind people are far more likely to be targeted than others. Many are both physically and verbally abused.

We want to find out more about why people attack disabled people – who are the assailants, do they share any common features? This offender profiling approach has helped police identify different groups of men who rape. We think that this approach would be useful with disability hate crime. If anyone works in this field, we would very much like to be in touch with them.

Mark Sherry, an American academic who has written for us before, has shared some of his work with us. He agrees that “many discussions of hate crime completely ignore the issue of disability”. He identifies some very interesting issues around hate crime – that often, for instance, two crimes are embedded within one act – known as “parallel crimes”.

A crime such as vandalism, theft, arson or murder occurs at the same time as the victim being targeted because they are disabled (a so-called bias crime).

This “parallel crime” theory explains why police often concentrate on the straightforward offence, rather than investigating the hate crime element, because
bias is harder to prove. Interestingly, he says that they may differ from other forms of hate crime in that while most hate crimes are stranger crimes, this does not seem to be the case with disability hate crime – something that we have observed in our analysis of such crimes here.

Keep reporting the crimes, and keep talking to us – your comments are very much valued.