Development of the Metropolitan Police Authority Hate Crime Forum

Report: 10
Date: 12 March 2009
By: Chief Executive

Summary

This report presents a proposal to redevelop the Race Hate Crime Forum (RHCF) to become an inclusive Hate Crime Forum (HCF) Monitoring hate crime across all 6 diversity strands.

The expansion of the remit to a more inclusive HCF will require appropriate representation from all diversity groups. This report highlights some of the considerations in taking forward the HCF and its potential work into the future.

The report indicates the continued focus on race and religious hate crime since this reflects the higher proportion of hate crimes reported.

A. Recommendation

That

1. Members agree the transition of the Race Hate Crime Forum (RHCF) to a Hate Crime Forum (HCF).
2. members agree the strategic purpose and proposed membership for the HCF to ensure representation across statutory agencies and all diversity strands.
3. members agree that the new HCF, in working with its partners, is granted a degree of flexibility to ensure an effective response to the range of issues it is likely to encounter. This is particular to engaging with those with disabilities.

B. Supporting information

Context

1. The death of Stephen Lawrence, the changes in legislation (the Race Relations Amendment Act 2000) and the recommendations from the Macpherson Inquiry Report were the initial triggers for discussions to address issues of race hate crime in London.

2. The Macpherson Report recommended that the Home Office, police services, local government and other agencies create a comprehensive system for reporting and recording all racial incidents and crimes.

3. The focus of the RHCF also reflected the Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which established the formation of statutory Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (CDRPs). The legislation enshrined in law the idea that crime reduction is not the responsibility of just one agency, such as the police, but is a partnership responsibility.

4. (For additional background information see Appendix 1)

5. Following lengthy consultation, the RHCF commenced its work in April 2004. The RHCF initial baseline scrutiny of London boroughs was concluded in November 2007, with all but one borough partnership having taken part in the scrutiny process.

6. At the Full Authority meeting of 31 January 2008, the MPA received a report (Report 7: Developing a London Hate Crime Forum), which addressed the issue of maintaining or disbanding the RHCF. The report discussed a number of options and considered the wider implications for London’s communities and the business impact on the MPA of each option. Prior to making its decision, MPA members agreed to await the arrival of the MPS Hate Crime Strategy before making any final decision on the future of the RHCF.

7. The MPS presented its hate crime strategy statement at the Full Authority meeting of 27 March 2008. An MPA report (Report 8: Developing a London hate crime forum)presented at the same meeting made proposals for the creation of a new MPA Hate Crime Forum (HCF). Members agreed to a redevelopment of the ‘Forum’ on the basis that it expands its remit to include all areas of hate crime and take account of the many drivers at play. (Appendix 2).

8. In order to move forward and to ensure the work of the new HCF remains focused, strategic and facilitates ongoing improvement, there is a need to review how it operates. This will ensure its structure and membership is robust and fit for purpose.

Why do we need a Hate Crime Forum?

9. There has been recognition that borough level scrutiny has played a key role in the success of the previous Forum and many of the recommendations from the Forum’s Annual Report have been repeated year on year. However, there has been little progress made in response to the recommendations. There is a need to move forward from making recommendations to identify clear target areas of progress and good practice from borough partnerships as well as maintaining scrutiny of the MPS in its response to hate crimes. The Forum will therefore support borough partnerships, where appropriate, in implementing its previous recommendations.

10. Many non-statutory agencies have repeatedly highlighted the victim experience of reporting hate crimes as being inconsistent in terms of their support from statutory organisations.

11. The transition from a Race Hate Crime Forum to a generic hate crime forum will provide a positive opportunity to extend the learning gained from the previous year’s work across all diversity strands as well as establishing clear targets for progress.

12. The Forum will maintain its race and religious hate crime focus since these make up the higher percentage of all reported hate crimes.

13. It is proposed that the membership and structure of the Forum be modified to ensure that those involved are able to drive forward actions as well as provide intelligence across all diversity strand areas. The structure for the new Forum should retain a London-wide focus and ability to effect and influence service delivery. Its work plan should be revised to reflect its broader areas of work.

14. The proposed new structure would consist of a core membership of permanent members, a number of invited members and a reference group to ensure all diversity strands are represented. Such a structure would have the flexibility to invite additional representation dependant on priorities. The membership will include representation from a range of statutory/voluntary agencies and a number of select individuals invited as appropriate.

15. The effective use of resources is fundamental to ensuring positive developments in addressing hate crimes. MPA and MPS officers involved in this work have a wealth of knowledge and experience developed over previous years. There is a need to maintain the expertise from within the MPA/MPS and from those external agencies that will assist the developmental process and future direction of the HCF.

Role and purpose of the Hate Crime Forum

16. It is proposed that the role and purpose be:

1. To lead on the effective monitoring, scrutiny and support of the MPS in its response to all hate crimes on behalf of the Communities, Equalities and People (CEP) Committee.
2. To secure continuous improvement in the MPS response to hate crime.
3. To robustly and effectively address the issue of consistency of service with regard to hate crime.
4. To exercise focused monitoring and support of the 32 Borough Operational Command Units (BOCUs) and the MPS as a corporate body, thereby monitoring coordination and implementation of policy and practice across the MPS.
5. To identify needs and gaps highlighted by the 32 BOCUs and corporate MPS units and, where appropriate, ensure concerns are raised with relevant MPA/MPS business areas, Committees and/or other fora.
6. To increase trust and confidence in the MPS response to hate crime and inform the response across the criminal justice system.
7. To work closely with the London Criminal Justice Board and other criminal justice agencies to improve policy and practice responses to hate crime.
8. To link to other pan-London and/or national hate crime and related bodies.
9. To disseminate best practice and innovation across the 32 BOCUs.

How best to achieve this?

17. The new HCF is established to act as a potential catalyst for action across all partners.

It is proposed that the Hate Crime Forum would:

1. Work to address inequalities based on race, gender, transgender, disability, age, sexual orientation, religious belief or non-belief in service provision relating to hate crime.
2. Seek to involve community members and external practitioners from hate crime support services and diversity specialist agencies, in order to share issues of concern and develop best practice and innovation.
3. Include themed discussion with MPS colleagues, community members and external practitioners, across a number of topical areas and those requiring priority considerations.
4. Receive reports from the MPS on its response to hate crime across all diversity strands. Any issues, which cannot be resolved, will be referred to CEP for a decision.
5. Hold meetings bi monthly, with the flexibility of holding additional meetings if required.
6. Will work with existing pan-London and/or national hate crime and related bodies, to ensure that duplication is minimised and good practice shared.
7. Will seek to have representation from community/voluntary and statutory organisations, where they exist, to ensure equality of focus and priority across all diversity strands.
8. Will prioritise its activity/investigation where specific concerns have been highlighted.

Focus of activity

18. The MPA has recently announced that the scrutiny of hate crime will be one of the Critical Performance Areas for the MPS. There is an expectation that improvements will be made in terms of the experience of hate crime victims and their interaction with the MPS across all diversity strands.

19. Targets for improvements have traditionally been monitored in respect of sanction detections, the use of cautions and prosecutions of hate crime perpetrators. Sanction detections are not the only method by which improvements can be monitored. Much of what could be explored in terms of the victim interaction with the MPS may be missed. A caution or conviction should not be the only measure of service delivery and informed feedback from victims may provide valuable insight into their experience.

20. Victim, witness satisfaction and feedback from victims and witnesses may provide broader and more realistic scope of the victim experience of engagement with the MPS.

21. An annual programme of work will be established by which to measure Forum progress.

It is proposed that:

22. The HCF will contribute to a number of specific work themes in conducting its scrutiny. These will include:

• Community Tension Monitoring
• Preventing Violent Extremism
• Young People and Gangs and
• The Olympics and Paralympics.

23. In supporting its work, the HCF will maintain contact and work closely with the MPA Engagement and Partnerships Unit to maintain good links with CDRPs across London boroughs to ensure hate crime remains on their agenda.

24. The HCF will also work closely with the MPA Planning & Performance Unit to ensure a good understanding of the interpretation of data from the MPS Police Information Bureau (PIB), British Crime Survey and data collected from other sources.

25. The HCF will work closely with the Home Office Violent Crime Unit and National Police Improvement Agency (NPIA) hate crime Unit as well as other nominated voluntary organisations.

26. Wherever possible, the HCF will work closely with other MPA/MPS and external organisations and across business areas where there is synergy.

Indicators for success

27. The work of the HCF makes a significant contribution to a number of specific objectives for the MPA and its vision. In terms of successful indicators, improvements in the MPS response would result in:

1. Increased confidence of victims/witnesses to contact the MPS about incidents/hate crimes
2. Increased reporting of hate incidents and crimes
3. Increases in the satisfaction rates of victims and witnesses to hate incidents/crimes by improving qualitative data analysis of victim feedback
4. Improvements in partnership working arrangements across agencies
5. Decreases in the differences in satisfaction rates of BME vs. white victims/witnesses
6. Consistency of service delivered across all London boroughs and
7. Communities feeling they have been included as part of the change and scrutiny process.

28. The HCF will also be monitoring the MPS in terms of hate crimes being one of its Critical Performance Areas, to support measures of improvements.

Risks

29. There are a number of risks attached to expanding the remit of the new HCF, these include:

1. The perception from the wider community and potential partners that the focus of race and religious hate crime may be diluted
2. There is a need to ensure any MPA media strategy is clear and accessible
3. The HCF may raise expectations from other hate crime areas and the experience of victims beyond what is realistic to achieve

Benefits

30. The potential risks will have to be balanced with the possible benefits, which include:

1. Maintaining a focus on race and religious hate crime
2. The demonstration of greater parity in its focus on victims of other hate crimes
3. Prior learning can be taken forward to support work into other hate crime areas
4. An opportunity to increase our work to a higher strategic level of scrutiny
5. More joined up working with other areas of MPA/MPS and criminal justice agencies
6. An opportunity to develop more qualitative methods of assessing victim/witness satisfaction and their engagement with the MPS
7. Ensuring the MPS takes corporate responsibility for delivering good practice responses to victims of hate crimes
8. Supporting the increase in reporting hate crimes across a wider spectrum
9. Supporting London to be one of the safest Cities in the world, especially in the lead up to the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic Games.

C. Race and equality impact

31. The new HCF will need to ensure the wealth of knowledge, talent and ability amongst statutory, voluntary and community members are harness to the benefit of the MPA and its hate crime agenda.

32. The expansion of the HCF remit to cover all hate crimes will respond to the many requests from other diversity groups to be included in the scrutiny of hate crime. The learning from the work of the former RHCF can be taken forward.

33. There is a need to ensure appropriate representation across all diversity strands if this process is to be successful.

34. Challenging issues of hate crime is not only the responsibility of the MPS but all partner agencies. Whilst the focus for the MPA is its scrutiny of the MPS, it would be of benefit to encourage the ongoing support and engagement with partner agencies.

35. It is important throughout the process to ensure there is no perceived hierarchy of hate crime and an acknowledgement of the multifaceted experiences of victims.

36. Invitations will need to be sent to organisations/agencies to ensure representation of other diversity strands. Some may require additional support in order to engage equally.

D. Financial implications

37. The MPA has acknowledged the importance of this area of work and has agreed to continue funding the work of the new HCF. Funding will therefore come from existing resources.

38. A dedicated hate crime project manager and a project administrator will support the work of the HCF. The budget for 2009-10, for staffing only, is £89,748 – no budgetary allowance has been made for non-staff costs.

39. The cost for the new HCF is likely to be similar but its increased remit may come with hidden costs. There may be additional costs in order to ensure the needs of people with disabilities are met as part of any consultative process. Expenses may be incurred in terms of access to meetings and the preparation of meeting notes in accessible formats. Wherever possible, this will be managed in-house but members should be aware of the possibility of additional cost. No budgetary allowance has been made for this. Whilst Communications department may be able to meet the cost to make literature available in accessible formats, there is currently no clear provision for British Sign Language (BSL) signers or Palantypists.

40. Approximate cost for a BSL Signer is £350.00 per day and the cost for Palantypists is £650 per day. There would be a requirement for two Signers or Palantypists at any single event. A bid would have to be made in the next financial year to meet this additional cost if required.

41. The new HCF will need to be relaunched and a media strategy required. The project manager will undertake this work in consultation with the MPA Communications department. There is no expected additional costs to this although there may be costs attached if specific leaflets and other publicity information are required. This would have to be accessed on an individual basis.

E. Background papers

• Developing a London Hate Crime Forum, Report 7, Full Authority 31 Jan 2008
• Minutes of Full Authority 31 Jan 2008
• National Indicators for Local Authorities and Local Authority Partnerships: Handbook of Definitions, November 2007, Department for Communities and Local Government
• From the neighbourhood to the national: policing our communities together
• Assessments of Policing and Community Safety, 60 Second briefing

F. Contact details

Report author(s): Bennett Obong, Project Manager, Hate Crime Forum, MPA

For information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

Appendix 1

Additional background information

1. In 2001, a working party was established to discuss the development of an MPA, London wide Race Hate Crime Forum and in May 2003, the RHCF was launched. Its membership consisted of statutory and voluntary organisations.

2. In April 2004, the RHCF commenced its scrutiny to establish MPS and borough partnership responses to race hate crime. The process involved sending invitations to London borough partnerships, MPS and local authorities, to present and share strategies in place to deal with victims and perpetrators of [initially] race and religious hate crime and (latterly) homophobic hate crime.

3. On 17 November 2005, the RHCF held a successful conference at City Hall, - ‘Hate Crime: A problem for society’, supported by the then Mayor of London.

4. In 2006 Paul Iganski, Lecturer in Sociology and Criminology at the Department of Sociology Essex University, produced a report[1] (in partnership with the MPA RHCF and London Probation Service) that highlighted the RHCF as a model of good practice to be shared across Europe in challenging hate crime.

5. The London Probation Service considers the structure and method of scrutiny, applied by the RHCF, as a model of good practice and positively promoted this through its work, challenging hate crime across Europe in; Bulgaria, Germany, Malta, Netherlands and Northern Ireland.

Legislative drivers for the Hate Crime Forum include the following:

6. The Crime and Disorder Act 1998, which created a number of new racially and religiously aggravated offences.

7. The Criminal Justice Act 2003, which introduced tougher sentences for offences motivated by hatred of the victim’s sexual orientation.

8. The Racial and Religious Hatred Act, which came into effect in 2007.

9. In its final year, 2007, the MPA met the full cost for the RHCF since the funding previously available from GOL had ceased. With increasing financial demands on MPA budgets, members requested a report to discuss whether the MPA was able to sustain the work of the RHCF into the future.

Appendix 2

Drivers for the work of the Hate Crime Forum

1. Home Office priorities around hate crime are established. These include:

• Increasing confidence in the criminal justice system and in other agencies that deal with hate crime
• Increasing the proportion of victims or witnesses of hate crime who come forward to report what they have seen
• Increasing the proportion of hate crimes brought to justice and
• Improving local responses to hate crime, particularly in areas that have disproportionate numbers of cases.

2. The Assessments of Policing and Community Safety (APACS) framework is a unified performance management framework introduced in April 2008. It applies to all police forces in England and Wales, covering key services delivered by the police working on their own or in partnership with others.

3. Performance indicators form a key part of APACS, measuring outcomes, perceptions, and activities, which reflect the impact of community safety and policing services in local communities. The suite of indicators is designed to measure performance over five core areas: Promoting Safety; Tackling Crime; Serious Crime and Protection; Confidence and Satisfaction; Organisational Management.

4. The National Indicators (NIs), derived from Public Service Agreements (PSAs) and the Departments’ Strategic Objectives (DSOs), have been agreed across Government through the 2007 Comprehensive Spending Review. The outcomes they measure and the indicators themselves provide a clear statement of Government’s priorities for delivery by local government and its partners over the coming years.

5. There are several NIs that read across to the APACS, PSA s and DSO objectives. Those that are of core relevance to the work of the HCF include:

6. NI 21 Dealing with local concerns about anti-social behaviour and crime by local council and police

7. NI 24 Satisfaction with the way the police and local council dealt with anti-social behaviour

8. NI 25 Satisfaction of different groups and the way the police and council dealt with anti-social behaviour

9. NI 27 Understanding of local concerns about anti-social behaviour and crime by the local council and police

10. NI 35 Building resilience to violent extremism

Other NIs that link to those above includes:

11. NI 1 Perception of people who believe people from different backgrounds get on well together in their local area

12. NI 3 Civic participation in the local area and

13. NI 17 Perceptions of anti-social behaviour

14. The best value performance indicators (BVPIs) 174 and 175, (the number of racial incidents reported and the proportion of racial incidents reported resulting in further action) serve as a measure of performance for local authorities specific to race hate crime.

Appendix 3

Appendix 3 is a report titled 'Developing a London hate crime forum' to the full Authority on 27 March 2008.

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