Written By Claire Prosho: https://x.com/CTransTalks?t=acOGp8a4krI7VfEaVF1Zpg&s=09
Over the last 18 months I’ve been gathering data on reported hate crime against transgender people in England & Wales. Every year around September or October, the Home Office releases the data it has collected for the previous year up to March of the current year, and I now have a data set that goes back to 2011/2012, which is everything I’ve managed to find and collate that’s been published by the UK Government. I’m hoping to wrap data for Scotland and Northern Ireland into this at some point in the future as well.
About a month ago I wrote a little thread on Twitter outlining what the data had revealed so far, while conscious of the fact it was a little out of date, with the updated figures due on October 10th 2024. That data came out on time, and I’ve been busy plugging it into my spreadsheet, updating graphs and analysing it.
Firstly, let’s take a look at how the data has trended.
This graph looks very similar for both England and Wales when taken individually, so I’m just going to talk about the combined picture. Please note that these trend figures exclude reports from the British Transport Police as I’m focusing on how the data plays out across regions and police services, hence the slight difference compared to Home Office figures.
The first interesting thing to note is that after years of somewhat steady growth of an average of 31% year on year, over the last 2 years reported hate crime has suddenly plateaued out. The historical trend aligns with community reported experiences in that the rise in hate crime really started around 15/16, coinciding with the start of the current, ongoing moral panic. I came out at the end of 2016 and it was already in full swing then with opposition ramping up around GRA reform. This was followed by a huge spike coinciding with the start of the Tory’s five year implosion after the election of Boris Johnson, the Brexit disaster, and their subsequent focus on culture wars against trans people as a distraction from the lies, corruption and massive failures at the heart of the Tory Government at the time.
During this time both Police services and the UK Government both claimed, repeatedly that this increase has been driven by better, increased reporting. They’ve been banging that particular drum since 2016, without evidence.
However, the data tells a different story.
In 21/22, only 5 of the 44 (11%) Police services showed a decrease in reported hate crime. In 22/23 that number had increased to 15 (34%) and data from the last year shows that more than half of police services (23 out of 44, or 52%) have seen a drop in hate crime reported by transgender people, which averaged out at a drop of 18% for each service that saw a decline.
Essex Police saw the biggest decline at -36.5%, and Leicestershire the smallest at -1.6%.
However, the vast majority of hate crime against transgender people goes completely unreported. In 2018 in their ‘LGBT in Britain – Trans Report’ Stonewall estimated the unreported rate to be around 76%, and in 20/21 Galop indicated this had increased to 86% in their ‘Transphobic Hate Crime’ report in 2020. According to my notes, at the time of the original Home Office release for 22/23 it had been noted that this had increased again to 9 out of 10 (90%), but this appears to have been edited out of the release shortly after publication.
In effect, hate crime against transgender people in England and Wales is at epidemic proportions, and reporting of hate crime to police services has collapsed across the country. It is that collapse in reporting that has led to the data plateauing out as shown in the graph above over the last couple of years, not an actual decrease in hate crime.
What else can we learn from the data we have?
Well, adjusting for population we now know that only 1 in 744 trans people reported a hate crime in 2011/2012, but in 2022/20023 this has increased to 1 in 55, compared to sexual orientation based hate crimes which have decreased 4 points to 1 in 67.
But if we factor unreported rates, the number of trans people experiencing a hate crime in England and Wales is 1 in 5.
Yes, you read that right.
20% of the trans population likely experienced a hate crime at some point over the last year, based on extrapolating data from reported hate crime. I honestly suspect that figure is much higher, given that TransActual reported 99% of trans people experienced online transphobia in their Trans Lives Survey 2021.
How is that hate distributed regionally?
The South East (Hampshire, Kent, Surrey, Sussex & Thames Valley) remains the epicentre for hate crime in England & Wales, accounting for 20% of all reported hate crime, a full 6 points ahead of the North West. Within the South East, Hampshire remains the focal point of hate, comprising 25% of the hate crime reports in the South East region.
Unsurprising when you consider that transphobic hate is the new middle class hobby for the 21st century, focusing firmly on the trans community from the leafy, tree lined heart of the middle class stockbroker belt.
If that wasn’t disturbing enough, it gets worse when we look at the data by the type of hate crime offence.
Hate crime is reported across multiple types, violence against the person, public order offences, criminal damage and arson, and other notable offences. Within that, violence against the person offences are further split between offences with or without injury, and stalking & harassment.
There were 2,717 reported violence against the person offences, accounting for 57% of all reported hate crimes and affecting 1 in 94 trans people.
Stalking and harassment offences formed the greatest number of violence against the person offences at 1,727, affecting 1 in 152 trans people. This actually only represents a 1.4% increase in the last year, but overall stalking & harassment reports have increased by 337% since 2017/2018, up from 395 in that year when they appear to have first started being recorded.
When looking at violence against the person offences with and without injury it’s even more disturbing. Although the numbers thankfully remain relatively small (378 with injury, 612 without in 23/24), it should be noted that the annual number of these offences have roughly doubled compared to 2021/2022, although they have remained static over the last year.
Public order offences have also almost doubled since 21/22, from 940 to 1,656, although this has decreased slightly over the last year by 2.8%.
By far the most disturbing data involves criminal damage and arson, which have more than doubled since 21/22 from 94 to 208, and has increased by more than 46% in the last year alone.
It’s easy to work out what has caused this collapse in hate crime reporting.
Historical mistrust with the Police and the massively increased politicisation of police services by the previous Tory Government as part of their phoney culture war, coupled with a complete lack of action by police services, who are hampered by a lack of interest & training, fear of upsetting the ‘freedom of speech’ brigade and UK press, as well as failings in primary legislation that mean hate crime against LGBTQ+ people is treated less seriously as a crime compared to race or religion, accompanied by higher thresholds for both evidence and prosecution, have all led to this sorry state of affairs.
From talking to friends in the community, the vast majority of the trans people just can no longer justify the waste of time and effort to report hate crime, especially online hate, for no return or action. Hate crime against trans people is simply not taken seriously in any capacity by Police or UK Government, and is far too often written off by police services and politicians as ‘freedom of speech’.
But all of this data shows empirically that trans people continue to face substantially increased risks of personal violence and abuse in public, and are being subjected to increased, more violent attacks in and on their own homes, across England and Wales.
That has to change, but does Labour have the courage to do anything? Personally I very much doubt it, but only time will tell.
