Hate crimes against Jewish people up 7 percent, official Home Office figures show
In a worrying development, there were 1,288 offences committed against Jewish people, up from 1, 205 hate, with an overall fall in offences against people of faith
Lee Harpin is the Jewish News's political editor
Hate crimes against Jewish people in England and Wales have risen again – while statistics released this week showed overall offences against victims of all religions had fallen by 18 per cent.
In a worrying development, official Home Office statistics showed during the year ending March 2021 there were 1,288 offences committed against Jewish people, in which religion was recorded as being relevant to their case.
The previous year’s figures had revealed there were 1, 205 hate crimes against Jews – meaning their was a 7 per cent rise incidents.
But the figures for this year ended before a whole spate of attacks on Jews in this country took place as a result of the latest conflict between Israel and Hamas, which took place in May.
The overall number of religion-related hate crimes fell from 6,856 in 2019/20 to 5,627 offence in 2020/21 – a drop of 18 per cent.
Those statistics were a sharp rise from the year up to March 2018, when 672 offences were recorded against the Jewish community.
A spokesperson for the Community Service Trust (CST),said: “It is alarming that religious hate crime disproportionately affects the Jewish community to this extent, and especially that anti-Jewish hate crime has gone up at a time when most religious hate crime has fallen.
“These figures do not even cover the period in May this year when anti-Jewish incidents reported to CST hit record levels. This trend needs to be reversed, and the people committing these crimes must be brought to justice.”
Hate crime is defined by the Home Office as “any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic”.
The overall number of religion-related hate crimes fell from 6,856 to 5,627 offences, a drop of 18 per cent.
The new statistics showed there were 2703 hate crimes recorded against Muslims in England and Wales up until March 2021.
In the previous year there had been 3089 incidents. For Christians the figures showed there were 521 hte crimes, compared to 531 in 2019/20.
Sikhs suffered 112 hate crimes as opposed to 202 the previous year.
Meanwhile Hindu’s were the victims of 166 hate crimes – a rise from the 114 in the previous year.
Overall reported hate crimes were shown to have risen by 9% to a record number of more than 124,000 across England and Wales since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
Racially motivated crimes, which are nearly three-quarters of the total number of 124,091 hate crimes, increased by 12% over the year ending in March 2021 amid Black Lives Matter protests and a backlash from far-right activists.
Homophobic hate crimes increased 7% to 17,135, while disability hate crimes increased by 9% to 9,208. Transgender identity hate crimes increased by 3% to 2,630.
Figures showed that more than half of the hate crimes recorded by the police were for public order offences, including threatening and abusing people in public places, 40% for violence and 5% for criminal damage and arson.
Nick Thomas-Symonds, the shadow home secretary, said the figures highlighted the need for immediate government action.
“The huge spike in recorded hate crimes in these statistics must be a wakeup call for urgent change,” the Labour MP said.
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