HATE INCIDENT ACTION PROJECT

At the Ramada Hotel, Loughborough, this evening, for the launch of the Hate Incident Action Project. This is hosted by Human Rights & Equalities Charnwood, which has obtained funding from the Equality and Human Rights Commission for this significant initiative. This new project will extend support to victims of hate crime across all the equality strands (age, disability, faith or belief, gender, race, sexual orientation). It will provide training for those involved with victims of hate crime (including visiting reporting centres, helping them extend their activities to all equality strands).

Among several interesting presentations, PC Pete Bumpus of Leicestershire Constabulary offers a look at the definition, history and current status of "hate crime". Leicestershire Constabulary deals with a total of 362,000 incidents per year. Of these,

• 24,000 involved domestic abuse
• 122 involved same sex domestic abuse
• 2,400 involved people with mental health issues
• 1,500 were race-related
• 220 involved religion or belief
• 200 were homophobic in nature
• 13 were disability-related

By far the majority of these were cases of verbal abuse (although that does not diminish their significance for the victims). I've asked Pete for a copy of his presentation, so I can lift some of the content for the blog.

This is one of those frequent occasions on which I'm speaking up for both Leicester Council of Faiths and the Regional Equality and Diversity Partnership. Laura Horton's here, Ian Robson (Director of the LGBT Centre) and Jai Parmar (from LCIL). That's them in the photo above (then Laura and me in the photo below). We have an REDP display as well as one for the Council of Faiths.