​FOI Ref: FOI/2021/2845

You asked

Could you please provide me with the stats regarding the number of people who have been victims of racially motivated hate crimes during the pandemic?

  1. How many people have been victims of racial hate crimes in the last year - August 2020-August 2021?
  2. How many people have been victims of racial hate crimes in the year - August 2019-August 2020?
  3. How many people have been victims of racial hate crimes in the year - August 2018 -August 2019?
  4. Can you also provide me with statistics of where these hate crimes take place?
  5. Could I also be provided with a statistic showing the ages and genders of people that are mostly victims of this crime?

We said

​Thank you for your enquiry on racially motivated hate crime.  

The latest data on hate crime (for the year ending March 2020) can be found within the Hate Crime, England and Wales, 2019/20 report that is published by the Home Office.

This report contains data recorded by the police, as well as data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW). This particular report also includes an Annex of provisional data on trends in racially or religiously aggravated offences during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic up to the end of July 2020.

In regards to questions 1 to 3, the police recorded 76,070 hate crimes within the 'race' strand in 2019/20, and 72,041 in 2018/19 (Table 2.1). Based on data from the CSEW for year ending March 2018 to year ending March 2020, it is estimated that there were 104,000 incidents of racially motivated hate crime per year (Appendix Table 7).  

In regards to question 5, Appendix Table 11 shows the percentage of adults aged over 16 and over who reported being victims of hate crime within the Crime Survey for England and Wales, between 2017/18 and 2019/20, broken down by personal characteristics such as age and sex. That said, the table provides estimates for 'personal hate crime' and 'all hate crime', rather than racially motivated hate crime in particular.

Unfortunately, we do not hold data on where racially motivated hate crimes take place, therefore we cannot provide you with an answer for question 4.

For further questions on this report and police recorded crime data, you can contact The Home Office directly at: crimeandpolicestats@homeoffice.gov.uk. Similarly, if you have any further questions regarding CSEW data, please email us at crimestatistics@ons.gov.uk and we will endeavour to help.