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Hate Crime Awareness Week

This week is Hate Crime Awareness Week and to coincide with this we hosted some Hate Crime training in Cheltenham. If you missed it, read this article to find out more.

Stop Hate UK is one of the leading national organisations working to challenge all forms of Hate Crime and discrimination, based on any aspect of an individual’s identity and have set this week as Hate Crime Awareness Week and are aiming to raise awareness of this issue.

GRCC were keen to get involved with this as obviously it’s an important issue and so we hosted some hate crime training in Municipal Offices at Cheltenham Borough Council. The training was led by Jane Gibney from Victim Support Gloucester and aimed to help attendees understand causes, impacts and responses to hate crime. In addition, the group looked at identifying, reporting and recording hate crime as well as looking at the Gloucestershire Hate Crime strategy.

The session firstly looked at what hate crimes actually are. There were four sections to this, depending on what sort of hate crime it is:

-         Involving an imbalance of power between perpetrators and victims.

-         Part of a broader continuum of prejudice experienced by minorities every day.

-         Not exclusively crimes or solely about hatred.

-         The effect on the wider community.

Types of hate crime were looked at next and Gloucestershire has several categories for hate crime:

-         Disability

-         Gender Identity

-         Race

-         Religion

-         Sexual Orientation

-         Age

-         Gender

-         Alternative subcultures

-         Homelessness

Ultimately, it was important to look at the ways that the crimes affect the victims:

-         Emotional health and well-being damaged

-         Damage physical health and well-being

-         Sense of anxiety, vulnerability and fear of future victimisation

-         Trigger depression and suicidal thoughts

-         Some adopt coping strategies and defence mechanisms

-         Division, fear and fracture in the community

It’s also important to consider the barriers to reporting a hate crime because there are many people suffering in silence still:

-         People can normalise their experience.

-         Aware of the police cuts.

-         Concerned about not being taken seriously.

-         Retaliatory violence.

-         Lack of confidence.

-         Lack of time and emotional strength

-         Experience rural isolation

The final part of the training was to look at the strategic objectives that Gloucestershire has:

1.        Hate incidents and hate crimes will be prevented through education and awareness raising

2.       Victims will be confident to report hate incidents and hate crimes in a way that is best for them.

3.       Hate incidents and hate crimes data will be accurately recorded and collated.

4.      Victims will have access to a range of support and resolutions.

If you are a victim of hate crime or have witnessed a hate incident, then there are several hate crime reporting options:

1.        Police

-         emergency 999

-         non-emergency 101

2.       Glos Hate:

-         Phone: 08000778460

-         Text: HATE to 80800

-         Online: www.gloshate.org

3.       Crimestoppers (Witness only):

-         Phone: 0800555111

-         Online: www.crimestoppers-uk.org

Posted by Jonny Gilder on October 16th 2019

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Gloucestershire Rural Community Council
Community House
15 College Green
Gloucester GL1 2LZ

T: 01452 528491

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