Asked by: Chris Leslie (The Independent Group for Change - Nottingham East)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many (a) prosecutions and (b) convictions there were for hate crimes against people with learning disabilities in (i) 2018 and (ii) 2017.
Answered by Paul Maynard - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Ministry of Justice has published information regarding prosecutions and convictions but the only hate crime offences specifically defined in legislation are ‘racially or religiously aggravated’ offences. The court outcomes for these offences can be found here:
Filter by ‘Offence’ for offences starting with ‘racially or religiously aggravated…’ and select all that appear.
As hate crime against individuals with learning disabilities is not specifically defined in legislation, we would not be able to distinguish whether or not a particular offence was related to a learning disability. For example, a relevant case could have the offence recorded simply as ‘common assault’. The level of detail required to answer this question may be held in court records, but to be able to identify these cases we would have to access and analyse individual court records which would be of disproportionate cost.