Police commissioner says there's a 'real challenge' with reporting hate crime in Thames Valley

Matthew Barber wants more scope for police officers to dismiss online taunts amid increases in hate crimes and incidents.

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Data from the PCC’s office showed recorded hate crimes in the Thames Valley were up by more than a quarter in 2021 which was more than 1,000 extra cases than the year before. 

Hate crime in policing relates to race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. 

Crimes relating to claims of transphobic behaviour more than doubled last year with overall reports up by 38 per cent in Oxford. 

Thames Valley Police

However, Mr Barber raised what he called a 'potentially controversial point' that hate crimes are recorded based on what the victim perceives and before the intention of any culprit has been established.

That guidance is under review after the College of Policing’s definition was successfully challenged through the Court of Appeal due to a clash with freedom of expression laws.

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Mr Barber said: “I think standards of behaviour in society are one thing and there are lots of things I would find deplorable, but in policing and a world of limited resources, we need to be really careful about what we treat as a crime. 

“There will be lots of offences that are incredibly serious and absolutely should be investigated by the police, pursued vigorously with those responsible brought to justice, but I think there will probably be other examples that are incidents where no crime has been committed.

Conservative Police Crime and Commissioner candidate Matthew Barber

“There is a real challenge for policing in differentiating between those two, how we effectively triage which of those come into policing so the force is not overwhelmed by people being rude to each other on Twitter versus real-world impacts where people are being harmed which is where, frankly, I think our resources ought to be focused.”

Later, it was put to Mr Barber that other forces have added misogyny to the list of factors for hate crimes and incidents. 

“I find the whole issue of the way we record and the nature of putting other characteristics into this group really problematic from a practical sense,” he said. 

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“It is not because I think racism, homophobia or misogyny are good things and we should ignore them, we absolutely have to take action as appropriate, but the practicality of the fact that the victim perceives that and that is what gets recorded, how that then changes a prosecution or not, is an area I am unconvinced by.”

The ratio of reports based on population show people are more than two-and-a-half times more likely to report a hate crime in Oxford than if they live in the neighbouring district of Cherwell. 

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