Police chiefs finally set to investigate their disability hate crime failures, four years after promise

Police chiefs have finally agreed to keep a promise they made more than four years ago to investigate why their forces were passing on so few disability hate crime cases to prosecutors.

The National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) announced in November 2021 that it would carry out a “thematic audit” of disability hate crime reports to try to understand why so few disability hate crime cases were being handed to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

Disability News Service (DNS) has now been assured that this work will finally begin within the next few weeks, after it questioned the delay.

A senior police officer admitted this week that the delay in carrying out the work had been “not acceptable”.

Inclusion London, which plays a key role in fighting disability hate crime, said there was a need for “urgent action” to address the issue, and said the audit was “long overdue”, while there was a need to “to dismantle a policing culture that effectively decriminalises disability hate crime” and treats disabled people’s lives as an “afterthought”.

The latest figures (from 2024-25), show the number of disability hate crimes that led to prosecutions was just 2.6 per cent of the number of disability hate crime offences recorded by police that year, compared with 18.7 per cent in 2016-17.

It is now more than seven years since DNS started raising concerns about police and CPS failures on prosecuting disability hate crime, and more than six years since it started questioning NPCC about figures that showed the number of cases being passed to CPS by police had fallen drastically.

Home Office and CPS data show the number of cases being passed by police forces in England and Wales to prosecutors has plummeted, despite recorded disability hate crime offences nearly doubling in the eight years from 2016-17 to 2024-25.

A freedom of information request to NPCC last October eventually led to the admission that the audit it announced in 2021 had still not yet begun.

In 2022, NPCC finally admitted that police performance on disability hate crime was not good enough and needed to improve.

But despite that admission, the figures continued to deteriorate.

The blame for the figures appears to be centred mainly on the police, for passing on so few cases to prosecutors, despite huge numbers of recorded offences, at more than 10,000 a year*.

In 2016-17, there were about 5,400 disability hate crime offences recorded by police and 1,009 prosecutions (18.7 per cent of the recorded offences), compared with 10,224 offences and only 279 prosecutions in 2024-25 (with prosecutions just 2.6 per cent of recorded offences)**.

In 2016-17, 988 disability hate crime cases were passed to CPS by police across the whole of England and Wales, but this fell to 754 in 2017-18.

In 2018-19 it fell to 367, and it kept dropping, to 320 in 2019-20, and 298 in 2020-21, before bottoming out at just 243 cases in 2021-22, before rising slightly to 269 in 2022-23 and 338 in 2023-24, and falling again to 328 cases in 2024-25.

This means that the number of cases passed by police to CPS has fallen from 988 in 2016-17 to 328 in 2024-25, while the number of recorded disability hate crimes rose from about 5,400 to 10,224 a year.

This week, NPCC’s hate crime adviser, Paul Giannasi, told DNS: “I am clear that the delay in progressing this important piece of work is not acceptable.

“Our hate crime team is a small national team which has been trying its best to respond to major national incidents and community tensions in recent years, to reassure different communities and put in measures to improve community safety.

“There was a downward trend across all crime types since 2015 in the proportion of crimes resulting in a charge or summons, which reflects more crimes being recorded at the start of the decade and the changing nature of crime being dealt with by the police.”

He said that some investigations might not lead to court action because they have been dealt with through out-of-court resolutions or because the victim did not support formal prosecution.

But Giannasi said: “We are determined to investigate the issues underpinning disability hate crime further, and have committed to start this review in the coming weeks with the support of our hate crime independent advisory group, which has representation from disability advocacy groups, as well as leading academics.

“There is positive work going on around disability hate crime in different forces across the country and I would always encourage people subject to hate crimes and abuse to report it to the police, so we can understand the scale of the issue and take action to bring perpetrators to justice and keep people safe***.”

Louise Holden, from Inclusion London, which leads the Justice for Disabled Victims disability hate crime campaign, said: “The prosecution rate for disability hate crime has sunk to 2.6 per cent. We are calling for urgent action to resolve this.

“An audit from the National Police Chiefs’ Council is long overdue, but the core issue of institutional disablism must be challenged if the ‘referral gap’ is to be closed.

“In London, the ongoing Fairfield Independent Review**** into the Metropolitan police is a critical test.

“While we are relieved that racism, homophobia, and misogyny are finally being named, the Met has yet to reckon with its systemic bias against disabled people.”

Holden said there was a need in London and nationally “to dismantle a policing culture that effectively decriminalises disability hate crime and that treats our lives as an afterthought”.

*Levels of disability hate crime estimated by the national crime survey are more than five times higher than Home Office figures, with about 56,000 adult victims a year, which police believe is probably the true level of offences

**The Home Office recorded hate crime figures exclude the Metropolitan police, for statistical reasons, so the true prosecution rate for 2024-25 will be even lower

***Victims and witnesses can report hate crime online through the True Vision website at www.report-it.org.uk

****The Fairfield Review is examining the progress the Met has made since Baroness Casey’s review into its standards and internal culture in 2023. That review was criticised by disabled campaigners for failing to conclude that the force was institutionally disablist, and then refusing to explain that decision, despite finding that one in three (33 per cent) disabled members of staff had experienced bullying