Introduction
Hostility against disabled people 1 that might be seen as a hate crime or hate incident is underreported in the UK (Smith, 2015, 46). Reports of these offences to the police are often mishandled, misrepresented, not believed, or de-prioritised, with a perception of vulnerability often used to signpost victims towards social support rather than accessing avenues to justice (Burch, 2021, 48–50; Brookes, forthcoming; Wilkin, forthcoming). There is a general paucity of research into disability hate (Wilkin, 2020, inter alia) and researchers can find the concept of disability hate nebulous and undertaking primary research difficult (Mason-Bish, 2013, 20). Because of the limited reporting of these offences, access to victims willing to share their experiences is also therefore limited. The aim of this paper is to explore the difficulties faced by victims of disability hate crimes and incidents when reporting these occurrences as the first step in the pathway to achieving justice and how these difficulties are overcome. This research is achieved through asking those victims who have successfully devised strategies to overcome barriers to reporting these crimes in the UK. Any experiences and strategies employed may also be usable in places other than the UK facing a similar dilemma.
Background
The author has personally been the victim of what has become known as disability hate crime. In the 1960s and 1970s, when this offending was as everyday as it is now, it was not known as hate crime. Actually, it was not spoken about very much at all. If you complained of the constant attacks by people who found it acceptable and laughable to mock your mannerisms and your dysfunctions, you were just told to get on with it, or to toughen up. As school was the place where the majority of the attacks occurred, that is where the author began to report these incidents. Following these reports, nothing happened. Nothing changed. No action was taken. Therefore, the most obvious thing to do was to not bother going to school. Trainspotting was the alternative. The author missed around five years of schooling, resulting in leaving school without qualifications and being unable to construct a written sentence. Recalling those incidents at school, they typically involved being thrown over a wall with a four metre drop on the other side, being spat at – oh that smell, being hit over the head with a cricket bat to knock some sense into him/me, and being regularly beaten up. These horrors took place almost on a daily basis. In a world where children regularly used the word spastic as an insult. Who would blame anyone for trainspotting as an alternative, when reporting such occurrences did not result in any change – aside, that is, from some of the teachers joining in with the insults. There was nowhere to turn to, no friend to find, no reliable way of telling anyone what was happening, and nobody to trust. Not surprising, therefore, that two suicide attempts and years of alcohol abuse were to follow. The impacts of those very personalised attacks linger for the author today. Fear at the time of perpetration has been replaced with flashbacks, being unable to sleep, and always recalling the smell of that spit.
The author is now a volunteer campaigner, advocate, and supporter for disabled people who have been victims of hostility and are seeking justice. The author is also a Lead Coordinator of the Disability Hate crime Network. The examples cited in identifying both the problems of reporting hate offences, and the strategies used to overcome reporting difficulties, are real ones. These examples are taken directly from people who have experienced difficulty in reporting disability hate and/or have adapted strategies to overcome those difficulties.
Methodology for this Research
In the author’s work to support and be an advocate for victims of disability hate, confidentiality and respect are important characteristics if any information is extracted from the support process. To comply with this, and although this is a piece of independent scholarship, ethical processes previously employed in university-aligned research were used. These included anonymity, an ongoing right to withdraw, a trauma support option, and the voluntary provision of informed consent (IC), which followed an explanation of the study and its purpose. A two-stage mental capacity test, stipulated for use by the UK’s Mental Capacity Act 2005 (MCA), was used. The Act is an enabling one that supports disabled people to participate and assumes an ability to undertake activities. The test is straightforward and can be easily administered by disability support workers and simply consists of two questions (Dow, 2008; Shepherd, 2021). For this research, the participants were asked if they could describe the aim of the research and then tell the researcher something about it. That meets the requirement under the Act (MCA, 2005; Social Care Institute for Excellence, 2024). Previously used by the author, it was employed here to ascertain the mental capacity of participants to give informed consent, which was then recorded on the IC document.
Leading a Network consisting of 4,000 members and having supported 120 victims provides a wide pool of potential participants. A call for participants to take part in this research resulted in 45 volunteers coming forward, with 31 chosen to provide evidence for this paper. Choosing more examples would have resulted in some repetition of experiences. Semi-structured interviews were used with open questioning to ensure victim experience, reporting choice, reporting experience, and strategies for overcoming barriers to reporting were all captured. The examples cited in identifying both the problems of reporting hate offences, and the strategies used to overcome reporting difficulties, are real ones. These examples are taken directly from people who have experienced difficulty in reporting disability hate and have adapted strategies to overcome those difficulties. Analysis and selection of which contributions to use was based upon those that would offer the widest range of different experiences and approaches to overcoming barriers. Contributions, in the form of examples, are anonymised and numbered as P1, P2 etc.
Structure of this Paper
This paper will firstly outline the definition of hate crime in the UK and the historically changing legislative landscape concerning hate crimes, before outlining the reticence to reporting. We then examine data regarding the small proportion of reports that are processed for charging and the few convictions that result in sentence uplifts being applied. The paper will then move on to the main section, which deals with the reporting of hate offences in the UK. It will explore the ways that victims can report hate offences, either formally via the police or less formally via the other third-party reporting (TPR) services. However, these reporting lines are often problematic. They are not all easy to use and do not always result in the desired outcomes. Consequently, some disabled people have adapted their approach to include strategies to make reporting pathways work for them, and these too will be examined.
Definitions of Hate crime in the UK
To understand, in UK legal terms, what a hate crime is, we turn to the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service (CPS, 2024), which serves England and Wales. Its role is to take referrals from police forces and, if evidence warrants it, process the prosecution of offenders.
The CPS recognises five types of hate crime against protected groups on the basis of:
Any crime can be prosecuted as a hate crime if the offender has either:
demonstrated hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or transgender identity;
or:
been motivated by hostility based on race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or transgender identity.
Someone can be a victim of more than one type of hate crime.
Whilst racial and religious hate crime is proscribed by the crime and Disorder Act 1998, sec 29–32, no piece of legislation exists in the UK to prohibit acts of hate and hostility against disabled people. However, originally the Criminal Justice Act 2003, and latterly section 66 of the Sentencing Act 2020, allow prosecutors to apply for an uplift (see below) in sentence for those convicted of a hate crime (CPS, 2022).
The police and the Crown Prosecution Office have agreed the following definition for identifying and flagging hate crimes:
Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice, based on a person’s disability or perceived disability; race or perceived race; or religion or perceived religion; or sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation or transgender identity or perceived transgender identity.
There is no legal definition of hostility so we use the everyday understanding of the word, which includes ill-will, spite, contempt, prejudice, unfriendliness, antagonism, resentment, and dislike (CPS, 2024, author emphasis).
Developments in Recognition, Definition, and Literature
Since the 1960s and 1970s, when this type of hostility had no label, a lot has changed in legalistic terms. The seeds for the legal recognition of hate crime were sown in the US in the 1920s, when hate speech was discussed and countered by the American Civil Liberties Union (Perry, 2010). In June 1989, the United States Congress passed the Hate crime Statistics Act (US Congress, 1989), which eventually became law in 1990 (Human Rights Campaign, 2024). In the UK, the crime and Disorder Act 1998 became a staging post for UK anti-hate legislation. In this Act, racially aggravated offences could attract a sentence uplift should the offender’s motivation for the attack be found to be based on racism. The Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001 added religiously aggravated behaviour. Latterly, it was the Criminal Justice Act 2003 that was to change the legislative landscape specifically for other protected groups. In this Act, if hostility towards a person’s sexual orientation, or towards someone’s transgender identity, were to be proven in court, then a sentence uplift (CPS, 2022) could apply. This Act also included the same consideration if the hostility were conducted against someone because of their disability. How it works is that the offence itself, for example, assault, would be considered in court. If found guilty, the offender could then be sentenced to a longer term by the judge if motivation for the attack could be proven to have been based on the victim’s disability in comparison with a similar attack that did not involve such a motive (Chakraborti and Garland, 2015). From 2020 in the UK, it is the Sentencing Act 2020 that provides legislation enabling these sentence uplifts (CPS, 2022).
In the UK, disability is defined as a physical or mental impairment that has a “substantial” and “long-term” negative effect on your ability to do normal daily activities (Equality Act, 2010). Further delineation within that Act classifies people with cancer, or who have had cancer, and those with temporary disabilities also as disabled under the terms of the Act. It additionally qualifies people with hidden disabilities as part of that protected group. ‘Protected’, in legal terms, intimates that people should be offered additional legal safeguarding. At this point it should be recognised that the term ‘hate’ is often replaceable by the arguably more meaningful word ‘hostility’. Hate itself is difficult to define and more troublesome to find as a motivating factor. Hostility, therefore, is a more readily usable term (Chakraborti and Garland, 2015).
Reported Offences
However, expanded protective legislation has seemingly achieved little protection for disabled people against hate offences. In the UK, in the period between 2012 and 2023, reports to the police of all hate offences have more than trebled, from around 40,000 in 2012/3 to approximately 140,000 in 2022/3 (Home Office, 2023a). The same data reveals that reported disability hate crimes have risen from 8,052 in 2018/9 to 13,777 in 2022/3. Conversely, the percentage of these reported crimes that resulted in a charge or summons to appear in court was only 1.2% (Leonard Cheshire, 2024). In the same period the general crime prosecution rate had increased 5.7% to 2022/3 (Home Office, 2023b). Therefore, although in the UK a suite of legislation has become available to protect those suffering hate crimes because of their disability, very few of these offenders ever go to court. Of the offenders who were convicted in court, the sentence uplifts were only applied on a very few occasions (Disability News Service, 2024). In summary, the legislation to protect disabled people in terms of hate offences has been strengthened, and sentence uplifts are available for cases with a proven motivation of disability hate; however, reporting of these offences is low, the referral for charging and a court appearance is proportionally lower, and sentence uplifts are frequently not applied.
Underreporting of Crime
Disability hate crime is an underreported phenomenon in the UK (Hall, 2019; Roulestone and Sadique, 2013; Sin et al., 2010; Wilkin, 2020). For many reasons, such hostility often remains the secret of the victim. These reasons include having little confidence in the reporting system and the law enforcement agencies (Paterson et al., 2018), the fear of reprisals by perpetrators, the embarrassment of reporting such issues, and also the prospect of reporting intimate carers, friends, and family. A study by Clement et al. (2011) found that 26% of 732 schizophrenic respondents reported suffering from discrimination and that any threat of victimisation was exacerbated by intersectionalities of gender identity or ethnicity. Such attributes are also a consideration in the reluctance to report offences, as there could be a risk of revealing such personal characteristics. Moreover, many victims with mental health issues fear being a victim of reprisals if they were to report an incident, and the UK charity Mind produced a report as long ago as 2007 finding that the psychological damage caused by continuing to be a victim of hate crime is compounded by the psychological pressures felt when having to coerce oneself through the reporting process (Mind, 2007). All of these factors function as a deterrent to the reporting of hate and hostility.
So, the abuse continues, as the author is aware of from campaigning work, work supporting and advocating victims of disability hate crime, and work coordinating the UK’s Disability Hate crime Network. Victims continue to be reluctant to report such victimisation for a number of reasons, as cited above. But for those who do wish to report such incidents, there are different avenues available.
The Road to Justice Begins with a Report
Three main avenues for disabled people to report that they have been victims of hostility will be discussed in this section. These are through the police, through third-party reporting (TPR), and via other social agencies.
The police service in the UK is axiomatically the foremost agency used when reporting a crime. In the UK, the police consist of 43 police forces in geographical areas funded by county councils and regional authorities, and also other Home Office-funded forces, for example, the British Transport Police, the Civil Nuclear Constabulary, and the Ministry of Defence Police. Most of these forces receive crime reports at their police stations, by telephone, and via online reporting portals. Nationally, the True Vision portal is additionally available for the online reporting of hate crime.
In the UK, hate occurrences are broken down into either hate incidents, where an episode of abuse has taken place but no crime has been committed, and hate crimes, where, aside from the abuse, it is determined that a crime has also taken place. Non-crime Hate Incidents (NCHI) are recorded by the police in accordance with the National Standard for Incident Recording (NSIR) (College of Policing (CoP), 2024; National Standard for Incident Recording, 2011). This document states that each case shall be individually determined as to whether or not it deserves to be reported as an incident, or indeed a crime. Each incident is considered at the time of reporting at the discretion of the receiving officer. A risk assessment should be conducted consisting of three main questions (NSIR, 2011, 3):
The receiving officer therefore has a crucial choice to make about how the incident is recorded and if any further action is required, and also if any immediate actions are necessary. That officer must therefore decide if a reporting threshold has been reached (CoP, 2024). If not, the incident may not proceed to be recoded as either a hate incident or a hate crime. Since 2023 in the UK, additional provisions to protect freedom of speech have been adopted as Authorised Professional Practice (APP) in the police (Home Office, 2023c). Under this Practice, the receiving officer may decide that the alleged offender was merely exercising their freedom to express their opinions, without meaning to be offensive (in the officer’s opinion), in which case a hate incident will not be recorded. Police officers in the UK are busy people. They work in high-pressure roles within tightening resources and may not take hate crimes as seriously in practice as police policy insists (Bryan and Trickett, 2021, inter alia). Therefore, and arguably, the pressure not to expose themselves or their colleagues to additional work must be ever-present. It would not be extraordinary, therefore, for officers to be reluctant to make reports of what may be perceived as incidents and crimes of lesser importance (in ibid) or indeed to decide that the threshold for a hate incident has not been reached. Problems reporting hate incidents and crimes to the police are cited in the examples below.
Third-party reporting is an avenue that does not normally involve the police at the outset. In the UK, Crimestoppers, an online and telephone reporting service, can receive reports and pass these on to the police. They accept anonymous reports of incidents and crimes, as well as intelligence reports on occurrences and people who may be deemed by the reporter to be suspicious. However, whilst these reports will ultimately be passed on to the police, clearly, because of the anonymity used by the reporter, the police cannot contact that witness, and therefore their evidence cannot be used in court.
In the UK, some charities, or third sector organisations, have established third-party reporting (TPR) centres where victims and witnesses of hate incidents and crimes can report such matters. Evidence is taken with a view to passing this on to the police for further action. Those reporting such incidents are generally given supportive care by the volunteer support workers at the centre where the report is made, although these reports are often also collected by telephone. However, the standard of these third-party reporting centres varies. Fitch-Bartlett and Healy (2022) argue that the service provided by these centres could be improved. Firstly, there seems to be a restricted awareness of their existence. Furthermore, even trained staff in the centres may display a significant lack of understanding and knowledge about hate crimes (Bartlett and Healy, 2022, inter alia). Clients of the author, cited in the examples below, have also stated that third-party reporting centres often seemed to be ill-equipped to give the help that is required.
Other agencies in the UK are often obliged to collect reports of hate incidents and crimes as well as other crimes, for example, anti-social behaviour. Typically these are housing associations and agencies that are utilised to manage social housing stock, or health service providers such as the National Health Service (NHS). Although, as our examples of reporting problems reveal below, this responsibility is often not discharged. The problems associated with trying to report disability hate incidents and crimes to these agencies are examined in the following section.
Reporting Hostility is not Easy
Reporting to the Police
The police service in the UK is faced with ever-changing demands. They are recognised widely as being under-resourced and often under-established (National Police Chief’s Council, 2017). As demonstrated earlier in this paper, these circumstances may lead police officers to be reluctant to classify hate incidents as hate crimes, instead treating them as protected speech and lower-priority offences (see above). Many of the author’s clients have been met with such reluctance whilst reporting being victims of hostility because of their disability. Witnesses to such acts have also found difficulty in reporting such occurrences. Complaints against the police provide, by some margin, the greatest number of follow-up actions required by disabled people reporting crime and therefore assistive actions taken by the author. Arguably, this is not surprising, as taking your report to the police may be the obvious thing to do. The police have the role of investigating crime and processing both victims and perpetrators for the attention of prosecution and potential conviction. They also have a responsibility to keep citizens safe and maintain law and order.
The author has assisted, in terms of support or advocacy, over 160 victims or witnesses since 2011, and the most voiced complaint from those trying to report incidents or crimes is that they are simply not believed by the officer taking the report. As client P17 (a middle-aged male who uses a range of leg support equipment) told the author:
I had waited in a queue to tell the desk officer about my windows always being broken and graffiti calling me the “stix man”, and he just looked straight through me, you could tell he didn’t give a damn.
Other occasions of reporting have resulted in more brutal treatment of the victim. P4, a female with learning difficulties, said:
I got taken into a room, I’m convinced this was due to me being different. I told them the whole tale again, for the third time, about this guy who pinched my a**e and called me a flid. 2 I had been in the police station for a good two hours. He looked at me and said, “Are you absolutely sure about this?” I couldn’t believe it, what’s the point of reporting stuff?
On occasion, when reports were taken seriously by the police officer accepting the report, the level of detail required to take any action by the police was seen to be excessive. P6, a female carer reporting that a client was attacked by a perpetrator using an unknown, and therefore potentially dangerous, liquid, which P6 assumed could have been an acidic substance, was asked by the police officer: “So, if you couldn’t identify the liquid, why did you assume it was acid?”
What P6 was bringing to police attention was that it was an: “…unknown, and potentially dangerous, liquid”. At the time of the attack, the attackers shouted “Acid attack” as they ran towards the carer’s client. P6 had to assume the worst and, as P6 stated:
[Y]ou can’t just cover people in liquid, scare them into believing it was an acid attack and run off. That has to be a crime!
Many of the author’s clients were asked when reporting incidents and crimes if they had video footage or other forms of palpable evidence of the assaults. One client, P31, a female wheelchair user, said:
How the hell am I supposed to capture a video of some guy telling me that I stink because I’ve got incontinence problems? Am I supposed to say, “Hang on mate, I’ve just got to take a video of you.” Really? How will that work? But it was no good, the cops [police] wouldn’t accept what I was saying unless I had more evidence. Stupid!
Another victim, P11, a male amputee, was asked: “Did you manage to record the abuse?” … His response: “Really?”
These were occasions where unreasonable requests were made of the victim or witness for evidence collected at the time of the assault. In these cases, the police were unwilling to proceed with acting on the information given until more evidence became available.
Furthermore, one victim, P9, a female with a facial disfigurement, was told by the police officer:
Without a witness we only have your word that this happened at all. An able-bodied witness would be even better.
Thus, devaluing the evidence given by a disabled victim, intimating that it would be of higher value if a non-disabled person could verify that the event took place. Another victim, P1, a middle-aged female with complex needs who was subjected to almost daily attacks because of the amount of necessary equipment that was taken on bus journeys, was asked for a supporting letter from their general practitioner (GP) [family physician] evidencing that P1 was indeed likely to be a victim of this type of abuse.
If the police do accept the report that a hate incident or crime has taken place, many of the complaints dealt with by the author involved situations where the victim has been directed away from seeking justice by the receiving police officer and instead referred to seeking treatment or social care instead. P1, a middle-aged female with complex needs, reported the following exchange with police officers:
They said “We can’t give you what you need here [in the police station]. We’re not equipped to deal with people with disabilities. Your best bet is to see your GP and get some medical help.” But I told him that I wanted to get these boys charged, because the abuse goes on and on. He said, “You won’t get that done here, we don’t have the resources to watch you all of the time, you’re better off with medical help.” I was furious, why do I pay my taxes for this?
On numerous occasions, a social welfare provider is the direction of choice for the police to signpost victims of hate attacks towards. Sometimes, the police will helpfully offer to contact the social services on behalf of the victim. As P11, a male amputee, stated:
I thought that things were beginning to go quite well. We had, at least, come to an understanding that I was a victim of a case of abuse, and I needed some justice. He [the police officer] went away for a while. When he returned, he said “Ok, I’ve sorted it out, social services have allocated a case worker, and you will be contacted in due course.” A social worker! I wanted to give a witness statement, have an officer attached to my case, and have the abuser prosecuted. But all I got was welfare assistance. It didn’t stop there, I promise you.
P2, a male with learning difficulties and uncontrolled mannerisms, was often a victim of abuse from local youths. P2 complained to the police of this behaviour on many occasions. P2 perceived that they were tiring of receiving these reports of hostility:
When I walked in [to the police station] they would say, “Hello again, long time no see,” in a sarcastic way. Or say to a colleague, “This is XXXX, he’s a season ticket holder,” referring to what they saw as frequent visits. But what are you supposed to do? Stay silent? Stay a silent victim?
This client, P2, was frequently labelled as a paedophile by young people in the neighbourhood. Pictures were taken by the abusers and posted on social media along with unsubstantiated allegations of child abuse. This had resulted in P2’s windows being broken and also being called names in public. After complaining to the police, the response was:
You need help mate. We can’t help you. If you do have unusual tendencies, then it’s up to you to have professional help. See your doctor and get on to social services, they can authorise psychological help.
The client, P2, took this attitude to the senior police officer on duty and made a formal complaint. The outcome of this will be examined later in this paper.
Reporting to Third-party Reporting Centres
In terms of volume, third-party reporting centres are the reporting channels that are the largest focus of clients’ complaints, after the police. Victims often choose these centres because they do not wish to trouble the police, have little confidence in the police, or are afraid of further victimisation. Third-party reporting centres offer a different experience of reporting hate incidents and crimes. In the UK, these are telephone, online, or drop-in centre-based, where victims and witnesses of a range of hate crime violations can go for help, support, and ultimately for the reporting of hate incidents and crimes. Crimestoppers is a nationally available service that can be accessed online or via the telephone. Reported occurrences or intelligence related to criminal activity can be given anonymously. Reports are electronically relayed to the police for the appropriate area concerned. Crimestoppers is nationally funded by donations and by supportive partners (Crimestoppers, 2024). Two main problems were identified by clients of the author concerning this service. The first is that you have no assurance that your report has been passed on to the police. As P22 states:
You make the call – and hear nothing. Did they pass it on? Were the police not interested? Was I not worthy of contacting?
The other problem with the Crimestoppers model is that if you choose to report matters anonymously, to protect your identity, then the police cannot support you, question you, or hope to pursue your case with an investigation. Therefore, there will not be a court case and, consequently, there is no hope of justice. Evidence from Crimestoppers is considered to be of the lowest grade and is more often used as additional to more direct evidence (Bird, 2024).
Localised third-party reporting is available in some areas, often funded locally by charitable donations and staffed by volunteers. Some centres use trained staff whilst others rely on well-meaning personnel. Some of these volunteers might have a restricted awareness of hate crimes, the law, and reporting of incidents and crimes (Fitch-Bartlett and Healy, 2022). Moreover, some difficulties do arise when the centre seems to devote more time to the supportive care of the victim than to reporting the offence. P7, a male with Parkinson’s, states:
She [the centre worker] was a well-meaning old dear, but I was trying to report a crime, a series of crimes and abuse. I had so much tea I’d forgotten what I was there for. I eventually just went to the cops [police] instead.
P11 (a male amputee) later went to the police as well as initially trying to use a TPR centre. P11 thought that the level of training was poor at the reporting centre, and they were not actually prepared to see any victims:
It took them 15 minutes to find the right forms, then they all went into a conference about who should ask what… it was a bit of a farce really.
P11 did continue to go through this reporting process, only to find that on reaching the police station, they had only a scribbled note of the offence to refer it to the police. P11 said: “I wish I hadn’t bothered”.
Reporting Through Other Agencies
Third-party reporting of hate incidents and crimes is also encouraged in the UK through those agencies that are responsible for the provision of welfare and support services and municipal activities, for example, in the care and education sectors. Local and regional authorities, housing associations that control and maintain social housing stock, and those who are contracted to provide services by these organisations also have a responsibility to collect and pass on reports of crime. In terms of the number of complaints, these agencies attract fewer complaints than both the police or the third-party reporting avenues (Bird, 2024). This could be because these agencies are more difficult to use and often more remote. Housing associations can be based some distance from the victim’s property and establishing contact may be a lengthy and inconvenient process (an example was the experience of victim P17, as described below). Alternative agencies, provided by local and regional authorities, can be difficult to contact, with long waiting times for telephone and email response. They also have extensive waiting lists for action to be provided. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, and the inclusion of home working for authority staff, contact has become more difficult and response times longer.
P17 (a middle-aged male who uses a range of leg support equipment) informed his housing association of personally abusive graffiti that he had been a victim of for over two years. P17 had been portrayed as the “stix man” and, as well as receiving personal abuse from neighbours, he was also a frequent victim of other forms of anti-social behaviour. P17’s windows had been broken, he had been spat at, and faeces had been pushed through his letter box. P17 considered it to be only a matter of time before his neighbours increased their level of offending. P17 had also been threatened with them setting fire to his apartment, and as he had restricted mobility, this had become a major worry for him. As to the helpfulness of the housing association, P17 said:
I think that I spoke to them on, at least, three different occasions. They had promised faithfully to pass on my concerns. Yet, when I went to the police and asked if anything [the complaints] had progressed, they knew nothing about them.
P24, a female who was mistreated by a UK national health provider, in that she was called names and treated with disrespect, complained to the National Health Service, Clinical Commissioning Group (now an Integrated Care Board) for that area. The person receiving the complaint intimated that a complaint was not normally necessary, and the participant should be aware that health staff were under enormous pressure to deliver assessments and treatments. However, P24 (a highly dependent female with mobility issues) was so upset at this disrespect from one particular health department that a formal complaint was required. P24 said:
Eventually you have enough of being told that “you type of people expect too much, you are a nuisance”. So, I sent a formal complaint off to the Commissioning Group. After three months and no reply I called them. When I actually got through, I was told that the complaint had been closed as no evidence was found. This isn’t the way that you look after people – and this was a health provider!
This section has shown, through examples provided by clients of the author, that the reporting of disability hate incidents and crimes is far from being an easy thing to do. Whether using the formal reporting channels of the police, or through third-party reporting avenues, victims and witnesses have, evidently, been treated with disbelief, disrespect, and disdain as they try to seek justice for their victimisation. In the next section, however, this paper will explore the skills and adaptations that some disabled clients of the author have resorted to in order to overcome these barriers against reporting.
Strategies to Overcome the Problems of Reporting
The dexterity and resoluteness of disabled people in overcoming barriers to reporting hate incidents and crimes is exemplified in this section. In citing these examples, however, it should be noted that not every strategy mentioned herein is appropriate in all situations where obstacles are placed before the reporter of a crime. Moreover, not every victim or witness will have the wherewithal to apply these strategies. This section is not, therefore, a guide as to what to do in particular circumstances, but merely examples of what has previously proven to be successful in reporting some occurrences of hostility. This section will employ the same order of reporting procedures as the previous section. To that end, the paper will explore reporting to the police, to third-party reporting organisations, and lastly, through other agencies.
Overcoming the Barriers of Reporting to the Police
A male amputee, P11, had been complaining to the police for some time about an assault, which was one of a series of assaults prompted by his status as a disabled person. Previous reports had led to a referral to a social services provider and therefore away from the pathway to justice that P11 was seeking. P11 had also tried reporting through a third party but was also frustrated in that respect. So, P11 used a radical alternative – protest. P11 used a chain to lock-on to the waiting room furniture in the police station where he had reported these incidents. The protest did not last very long, about 20 minutes, but it did attract the attention of the senior officer on duty in this East Midlands police station. That police inspector arrived and began to ‘talk down’ P11 from continuing with the protest. During this, P11 voiced frustration at not having the recording of a disability hate offence taken seriously. P11 was so emotional about not having this opportunity that protest was seen as the only practical alternative. The crime was then eventually recorded; however, this did not result in a later conviction. Indeed, no offender was charged with the offence.
Many clients of the author, mainly on the author’s advice, have generated formal complaints against the police for not recording hate incidents or crimes. The pathways to making formal complaints can be triggered by the officer receiving the report using their discretion not to process the claim further. In around half of these cases, a reconsideration takes place, and the officer then accepts the report and records it as an incident or a crime. However, this often fails to result in an offender being found, charged and therefore a court appearance, and, potentially, justice.
More drastic complaints have involved formal complaints to the Professional Standards Unit (PSU) of the police force to which the grievances were made. Clients of the author do, however, describe the time taken to investigate such matters as ranging from two to eight months, depending on how busy that Unit is and how many matters it is managing at the time of the report. Many of the claims investigated by these Units are lengthy, complex ones, often involving serious allegations against individual, or groups of, police officers. These Units may not therefore have the resources to look into what are perceived as lighter matters. Clients do confirm, however, that when the engagement of a Professional Standards Unit is employed, it mostly results in an acceptance of the report and a record of the crime is then made. P2 (a male with learning difficulties and uncontrolled mannerisms) was one of those clients raising the issue with the local force via the Professional Standards Unit. P2 had been maligned as a paedophile, which led to him being pilloried in social media, with consequential violence and damage to P2’s home. When reporting such incidents, P2 had been labelled by some police officers, and one in particular, as a “regular” [complainer] and one who holds a “season ticket” [to the police station]. P2 stated:
It was a difficult choice for me. I didn’t want to see any copper [police officer] get into any trouble, but I had had enough of it and being ignored too.
The outcome, following eight months of an investigation, was to find in favour of the complainant and the foremost officer concerned was “duly addressed” for their behaviour. Only then were the complaints identified by P2 re-investigated. However, those investigations have not, at the date of writing, culminated in the charging of any individual with an offence.
Other clients had found the need to take their complaint further, to the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC). Unfortunately, for those complainants, this is yet another lengthy alternative. Only once in the cohort of clients cited within this paper did a complainant receive a satisfactory outcome from this organisation. Moreover, whilst this led to a disability hate crime being recorded, and did result in an offender being apprehended, the victim was ultimately unsuccessful at the hearing in the Crown Court.
Overcoming Barriers Experienced Through Third-party Reporting
Taking action to resolve problems with third-party organisations takes a more informal approach. Many of these organisations are in the third sector in the UK, which is to say they are run by volunteers. Therefore, aside from Crimestoppers, no formal avenues of complaint have been established, although feedback is often sought on the performance of the volunteers and the process through which the reports of incidents and crimes are made. This has, however, led to innovative measures being taken by clients of the author, who have adapted the reporting situation, and any failure of progress, to their own needs. These third-party reporting centres are often run by charities covering their own geographical areas; for example, they may be regionally or town- or city-based. These centres often seemingly offer a very professional service. But inconsistencies are evident. Training and operational protocols are not standardised as there is no existing statutory regulating authority to set such a standard. Therefore, user experience is also mixed. P13, a female with a chronic illness and mobility issues, entered a shop to hear that “it” [P13] was back [in the shop], from one of the staff inside. Derision and laughter followed. P13 sought a local reporting service in an effort not to trouble the police. For two hours and 45 minutes, P13 tried to give a full account that would be passed on to the police. Eventually, P13 had another idea:
I looked online at what types of evidence the police might prefer. Then I wrote it down in a chronological order and took it to the [reporting] centre. In other words, I did the work for them, all they had to do was to pass it on.
After three days, P13 was told that these reports had been passed on to the police. Another week passed and eventually the police contacted P13 for further details. Following several months of silence, P13 was told that a male was cautioned by the police for offending against P13. However, P13 was not invited to take any further part in the process.
Another client, P7, a male with Parkinson’s, was grateful for the supportive care given by the reporting centre but sensed that no progress was being made. Aside from being given lots of cups of tea, P7 stated: “I just went to the cops [police] instead”. However, P7’s case did not result in the charging of an offender.
P19, a neurodivergent female client, and formerly a schoolteacher, found that the questions being asked in the reporting centre were not conducive to building a portfolio of evidence for reporting a crime. Also, P19 was being asked different types of question by two different volunteers. P19 started to probe the volunteers regarding their level of training and assessment:
I said, “Have you had any training for this?” “Oh yes,” was the reply… “I think we have.” So, I asked if they used a standard form to complete when seeking details? “Yes,” was the answer, “but we don’t have any at the moment.”
P19 eventually gave up this crime reporting process and went to the police to report it. That report was successfully registered, but no charges were brought.
Finally, P21, a former civil servant, now with severely restricting mannerisms, was so disenchanted with the service offered by the local reporting centre that:
I knew what I would do. I was lucky, I had considerable influence at the local authority, so I started my own third-party reporting service. I used a room at the council [local authority] offices every Tuesday and Thursday. I constructed a suite of forms, got a pre-used table and three chairs, bought a kettle and some cups, and went off to the police station to meet with our local Neighbourhood Watch [a volunteer crime reduction organisation] liaison officer. We had a great discussion, and the officer popped in on our opening day. To date, we have had about nine reports of different hate incidents and crimes, all of which have been promptly passed on to the police. Building a good working relationship with the local police is an imperative.
This resulted in a new reporting avenue being opened, one that has reportedly been used on many occasions.
Overcoming Barriers When Using Other Agencies
Making formal complaints of harassment, hostility, and anti-social behaviour is an unfortunate necessity in some areas. Housing associations who are contracted or paid to provide social housing are agents for complaints, as are the health authorities and other public agencies. P17 (a middle-aged male who uses a range of leg support equipment) was frequently a victim of youths breaking windows and shouting abuse. The offenders were neighbours in the same housing complex. P17 approached the housing association for help and complained about their conduct. P17 found that the complaints made were not passed on to the police. The housing association were not, therefore, fulfilling their obligations under either their contract to the local authority, or the Equality Act 2010, sec 149, the Public Sector Equality Duty (PSED). The latter stipulates that any public service provider, or its contractor, must have in place procedures for dealing with complaints of safeguarding failures made by protected groups, for example, disabled people. Once P17 had discovered these were issues of non-compliance under contract and the law, P17 made a formal complaint of a safeguarding failure to the local authority. This too was seemingly ignored for some time, until a glib response offered no satisfactory resolution. Then P17 used the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) service in the UK to formally complain about the local authority and its contractor, the housing association. Almost one year passed before the Ombudsman upheld P17’s complaint and the housing association was heavily fined for failing to safeguard its tenants. The local authority was also reprimanded for failing to monitor the activity of its contracted housing association. A long process, but with a positive ending. P17 also conveyed his crime reports directly to the police where, consequently, police patrols were enhanced in the area and the youths found and cautioned. To the date of writing, no further incidents have occurred to P17.
In a case of a public agency causing hostility towards disabled people, P24 (a highly dependent female with mobility issues) was so upset by continuing abuse from staff in a local health treatment centre that a complaint was raised. The regional NHS management team did not help to resolve the issue. Therefore, P24 went to the Patient Advice and Liaison Service (PALS). This is a patient liaison service that helps to resolve complaints and other issues that exist between patients and the health provider. Within one week, PALS had formed an agreement as to a way forward between the local treatment centre and P24.
Conclusions
For the professionals and volunteers who work to support the reporting process, we owe so much of our gratitude and respect. However, this paper has not dedicated much focus to what works well, but instead, to what does not work so positively to improve the lives of disabled people. The intention of this paper is therefore to draw attention to occasions where disabled people found difficulty in successfully reporting hate crimes and incidents, and the strategies that some victims turned towards to overcome those difficulties. In balance, it must be recognised that many of the agencies mentioned in this paper do excellent and irreplaceable work, but that some have a need to develop their policies and practices towards disabled people. Moreover, in the most difficult of situations, some reporting avenues work through individuals giving up their own time to achieve often seemingly impossible tasks, although sometimes through unprofessional approaches. Such findings align with the work of Fitch-Bartlett & Healy (2022). The UK police service, especially, works within an atmosphere of ever-changing political demands that are made but not supported by additional resourcing or funding (National Police Chief’s Council, 2017). Thousands of cases of hostility against disabled people are dealt with, and though some (albeit a minority) are successfully concluded with the conviction of offenders, these must all involve the overcoming of barriers for victims to report these incidents in the first place. In the light of established difficulties in communicating with some disabled people (Bryan & Trickett, 2021), training for police officers, and for civilian police staff receiving reports, could be an avenue to pursue, giving police confidence in knowing how to communicate, especially if this training was facilitated by disabled people. Such training, if the police had sufficient time and resources to provide it, would also help to overcome discrimination against disabled people when dealing with the police (Clement et al., 2011). Law enforcement and the prosecution agencies need to be more aware of the impacts of victimisation upon disabled people and therefore have an opportunity to develop tools to reduce the number of disability hate crimes (Home Office, 2023a). There is a need, therefore, to overcome the dearth of confidence suffered by the potential reporters of hate incidents and crimes (Paterson et al., 2018). Such reporting would help in the accumulation of data and intelligence for the police and consequently help to achieve justice in a timelier way. Moreover, as Mind (2007) established, delays in reporting and the process for achieving justice can lead to more psychological difficulties for the victims. These escalations are clearly unwelcome for the victims and present enhanced workloads for a range of health and support providers as a consequence.
Whilst the study of disability hate crime is in itself a restricted one that draws comparatively little academic attention, it is important to study how disabled victims of hostility adapt themselves to overcome new barriers in life. This paper has brought together the obstructions placed in the paths of disabled victims and witnesses to disability hostility and explored examples of how disabled people have adapted to overcome these barriers to reporting such hostile incidents in their striving to seek justice for their victimisation. Of course, more research is needed. Further studies into the behaviours of those who receive these reports from disabled victims are required. Further adaptations by disabled people to overcome prejudice, misconception, and devaluation need to be understood and communicated. Whilst this paper has revealed the disrespect associated with reporting incidents, it has also shown the resistance, resoluteness, and capability of disabled people who just wanted to find justice for their suffering at the hands of offenders. If an accumulation of similar research were established, then, perhaps ultimately, we might one day witness a change of policy based upon a wider understanding of the issues facing disabled people in the reporting of crime and the related search for justice. Perhaps more training of those who receive reports might be forthcoming. Perhaps easier reporting channels for disabled people might be created. Hopefully, there could even be a broader wholesale respect of disabled people within society. We can always dream.