Justice system 'failing' on hate crime

The government’s chief prosecutor has admitted that the justice system’s performance on hate crime is ‘catastrophically low’. Katharine Quarmby reports

The outgoing director of public prosecutions and head of the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), Sir Ken Macdonald QC, has given a ground-breaking speech about how the criminal justice system treats disability hate crimes – and dubbed it a “catastrophically low level of performance”.

In his speech last month to the Bar Council and the Equality and Diversity Forum, which jointly hosted the event, Sir Ken described the dearth of disability hate prosecutions as “a scar on the conscience of criminal justice. All institutions involved in criminal justice, including my own, share the responsibility.”

Sir Ken said that too many disabled people were living in fear because the criminal justice system was letting them down and urged police and prosecutors to make sure that hate crimes were prosecuted as such.

He said he believed that disability hate crime was “very widespread” and added: “Where there is evidence of hostility, police and prosecutors must ensure that it is put before the court. It is our duty to give effect to the law which supports the struggle for disabled people to live as full and valued members of society.”

He added that “a mistaken focus on vulnerability risks enhancing an already negative image of disabled people as inherently weak, easy targets and dependent. This approach is wrong. It means that the opportunity to condemn the prejudice and hostility of the offender is missed.”

He promised action to improve the way the CPS handled disability hate crime prosecutions. Lead hate crime prosecutors from all CPS areas would combine to enhance awareness and build competence and there would be assessments of case handling performance.

Sir Ken praised the work of Disability Now (among other organisations) in highlighting the issue and quoted directly from Getting Away with Murder, the report we co-published with Scope and the UK’s Disabled People’s Council.

Disabled people present welcomed Sir Ken’s intervention but warned that more must be done.

Ruth Bashall, the co-chair of the Metropolitan Police Service’s disability independent advisory group, said progress within the police service towards understanding what disability hate crime was remained very slow. She wanted more involvement in training from disabled people’s organisations – for which they should be paid.

This point was echoed by Andrew Lee, from People First, who was frustrated by the “lack of skills” shown by many law officers in the criminal justice system in investigating and prosecuting disability hate crime. He later added that the system needed a “kick up the arse” to improve its performance.

Sir Ken concluded by thanking disabled people’s organisations, including Disability Now, for their campaign work and stated that it was “not tenable to have a criminal justice system that does not protect disabled people”.