The Challenge
Communities do not function effectively when physical or verbal abuse or harassment go unchecked and perpetrators fear no penalty.
Disabled people of all ages find opportunities to participate constrained by the fear or reality of harassment and the failure of criminal justice agencies to offer fair redress. This includes bullying of disabled children and abuse of disabled adults in the community and within services that are meant to support them.
The experience or fear of crime has a marked impact on individuals’ ability to participate fully in social and economic life and on their health and well-being. Hostile behaviour towards someone who is disabled not only restricts the freedom of that person but also attacks the sense of security and belonging of all disabled people. It undermines the wellbeing of their family and wider community.
Prejudice against disabled people is widespread and far more common than the experience of overt discrimination. Tackling the extremes of behaviour, such as hate crime, which only affects a minority, is essential to demonstrating that prejudice and discrimination across the whole spectrum will not be tolerated.
Research has found that nine out of ten people with learning disabilities report harassment as a feature of everyday life.
Research by the DRC in Scotland found that between a fifth and a quarter of disabled people had experienced harassment in public for a reason related to their disability. A subsequent survey found that around one-third of those subjected to abuse or harassment had to avoid specific places and change their usual routine. One in four moved home as a result of an attack.
Investigations have also revealed disturbing degrees of abuse of disabled people within residential and healthcare settings.
Abuse flourishes in cultures that tolerate and fail to challenge poor relations between different groups in society. In this climate, negative stereotypes persist and may become institutionalised. For example, disabled people are frequently characterised as ‘vulnerable’ rather than supported to assert their rights. People with mental health problems are widely considered to be a risk to the wider public. Disabled people’s exclusion from the world of work, mainstream leisure and education activities maintain such stereotypes.
Many disabled people have a heightened fear of crime and lack trust in the criminal justice system. Some people with mental health problems, learning disabilities and sensory impairments report that their experience of crime, including hate crime, is dismissed as insignificant and their credibility as witnesses questioned.
There is consensus within the criminal justice system that equal access to justice for disabled people is currently accorded low priority and investment.
Crimes against people in receipt of social or health services, including those carried out by staff, are often dealt with entirely as workplace management issues and without the involvement of police and the criminal justice system.
In England and Wales there is legal recognition of hate crime against disabled people. Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, enacted in April 2005, requires the courts to consider hostility related to disability as an aggravating factor when deciding on the sentence for an offence. Other legal and policy developments, such as the special measures provisions of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 and the Protection of Vulnerable Adults scheme, have sought to improve protection and access to justice. The Disability Equality Duty (DED) requires public bodies to take positive action to address inequality, promote positive attitudes and eliminate harassment.
Despite such progress, disabled people experience unequal access to justice, with low levels of reporting of crime, a lack of trust in the criminal justice system and little voice in services or new developments.
Preventing and tackling crime and harassment experienced by disabled people will require the commitment of diverse players across the justice and community safety sectors and beyond.
In particular, there is a need for regular research by governments to explore the prevalence of physical and verbal abuse and harassment for reasons related to disability.
Policies to promote safety and provide support to witnesses and victims should not characterise groups as intrinsically ‘vulnerable’. They should not subject people to risk-averse policies that constrain independence. Instead, they should address circumstances where there is evidence that people may become vulnerable to abuse, such as institutional living or poor housing.
It is critical that appropriate sanctions are imposed upon perpetrators of harm motivated by hostility on grounds of impairment or health condition – including use of sentencing powers for aggravated offences.
This paper proposes policy solutions for reducing harassment, abuse and hate crime. It is part of a series offering the DRC’s proposals for a future public policy agenda.
Unless otherwise stated, everything in this paper should be taken as relevant to all three countries of Britain.
An alternative future?
The DRC believes the reality and fear of abuse and harassment
of disabled people can be significantly reduced.
The key objectives for an effective reform agenda are to:
- Achieve good relations between disabled people and other citizens.
- Inform and empower disabled people and enable them to contribute to safer, stronger communities.
- Achieve seamless justice (from the neighbourhoods to the courts), including a competent, effective and confident civil and criminal justice system, able to serve disabled people effectively.
Recommendations for action
1. To achieve good relations between disabled people and other citizens
The Commission for Equality and Human Rights (CEHR) should:
1.1 Develop high profile campaigns to promote positive attitudes and good relations, including between disabled people and other citizens, as part of its duty to promote good relations. The CEHR will need to consider evidence of the different experiences of people based on type of impairment or other personal circumstances – for example, the very high rates of harassment reported by people with learning disabilities and public ignorance and fear about HIV/AIDS and mental health problems.
Governments should:
1.2 When funding community cohesion and good relations work, require organisations to demonstrate their ability to involve disabled people and to promote positive relations between disabled people and other citizens.
Schools should:
1.3 Take a ‘whole-school’ approach to tackling harmful behaviour towards disabled pupils and promoting positive attitudes. This should be underpinned by a commitment to full participation and respect for all pupils. Modules on disability should be incorporated as mandatory elements of the citizenship curriculum in England, the personal and social education curriculum in Wales and the modern studies curriculum in Scotland.
All public authorities should:
1.4 Pay specific attention to the impact that policies have on eliminating harassment and promoting positive attitudes towards disabled people, when impact-assessing public policy against the duty to promote disability equality. This is of particular relevance where the policy might result in the separation of disabled people from other citizens in education or social care, or where the policy could facilitate disabled people’s participation in social and economic life.
2. To inform and empower disabled people and enable them to contribute to safer, stronger communities
Governments should:
2.1 Evaluate the potential for disability liaison officers and independent disability advisory groups to improve disabled people’s safety in pilot police forces and authorities.
2.2 Ensure that national standards for Crime and Disorder Reduction Partnerships (plus similar standards in Scotland and Wales) explicitly require the active involvement of disabled people and action to address abuse motivated by hostility, on grounds of impairment or health condition.
2.3 Ensure the Home Office’s crime reduction website includes a microsite with guidance, information and good practice in ensuring safety and effective redress for people who may experience harassment and other crimes linked to their impairment or health condition.
The Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO/ACPOS) should:
2.4 With CEHR, ensure that information on tackling verbal and physical harassment is distributed to all crime and disorder reduction partners, including local authorities and police forces, and via them to disabled people.
2.5 Map and evaluate existing local programmes to empower individuals and build the capacity of police and other agencies.10 Positive practice should be promoted to all forces and authorities.
3. To achieve seamless justice (from the neighbourhoods to the courts), including a competent, effective and confident civil and criminal justice system, able to serve disabled people effectively
Governments should:
3.1 Establish a cross-agency working group, involving disabled people, to achieve clear, shared definitions of harassment and hate crime. They should also develop enforceable statutory guidance on Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003, informed by the findings of the working group on definitions.
3.2 Ensure that consistent and comprehensive practical indicators of hostility on grounds of impairment or health condition are drawn up by the Home Office and Scottish and Welsh Ministers, and used to inform all other policy developments.
3.3 Set targets for increased reporting of hate crime against disabled people, as an interim step to reducing this type of crime. Increased reporting may appear to conflict with crime reduction targets and an amnesty on such targets for a specific period could address this. Governments should mitigate the risk that a growing recognition of hate crime will increase disabled people’s fear of experiencing crime by developing ‘fear of crime’ strategies.
3.4 Review policies that provide for the protection of disabled people within health and social care services, such as the ‘no secrets’ policy, to clarify the roles and responsibilities of relevant agencies. The aim should be to ensure a positive police and criminal justice response to all incidents of abuse and violence towards disabled people, and a clear obligation on social care and health agencies to support the criminal justice process.
3.5 Develop a training scheme across criminal justice agencies based on shared definitions and indicators, with the flexibility to accommodate individual agencies’ operational needs.
3.6 Develop a shared protocol for all relevant agencies (including civil agencies) working to tackle abuse and harassment. This should enable the police and prosecutors effectively to harness evidence to build cases and to improve referrals from civil to criminal justice agencies, where this is appropriate.
3.7 Establish integrated systems for monitoring investigations across agencies, enabling effective case-tracking and analysis of factors contributing to successful and unsuccessful prosecutions.
3.8 Amend Scottish criminal law to allow for weightier sentencing for offences motivated by prejudice or hostility towards disabled people, in line with the recommendations of the Scottish Executive’s working group on hate crime report and in line with developments in England and Wales.11
3.9 Establish accessible reporting systems (including emergency and non-emergency numbers) and work to increase disabled people’s safety and confidence in the criminal justice system. Third-party reporting centres should be evaluated and rolled out if appropriate. Formal and informal links should be built between neighbourhood policing teams and disabled people’s organisations. This would have the additional advantage of helping to build the skills and awareness of police teams.
Governments at national and local level and criminal justice agencies should:
3.10 Undertake regular disability equality impact assessments of anti-social behaviour (ASB) policy and delivery. This should establish whether ASB powers offer effective protection to disabled people and whether sanctions are used disproportionately or inappropriately against people for impairment-related behaviour. ASB powers must not legitimise intolerance of some groups of disabled people.
Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary or the proposed Inspectorate for Criminal Justice and Community Safety should:
3.11 Conduct an inspection of police performance in responding to crimes against disabled people. This should identify best practice in local policing and integrate findings into mainstream inspection.
Measuring change
1. Governments and the CEHR should track attitudes towards disabled people and develop measures of good relations.
They should:
- commission robust research to explore the prevalence and impact of physical and verbal abuse and harassment for reasons related to impairments or health conditions
- require consistent and effective recording of harassment and other crimes by police forces, including whether the victim of any crime meets the Disability Discrimination Act’s (DDA) definition of disability, broken down by broad impairment group. Increasing reports of hate crime should not be viewed as representing actual increases in crime but as increased confidence to report.
2. Governments should assess the extent to which disabled people are empowered and informed by:
- tracking disabled people’s sense of belonging to the community or British society, through the citizenship survey
- ensuring that inspectorates assess disabled people’s involvement in crime reduction
- including people in residential establishments in such evidence gathering.
3. Governments should assess disabled people’s experience of the criminal justice system through:
- using the British crime survey in England and Wales and the Scottish Crime Survey to examine disabled people’s safety, experience and fear of crime and their trust in the criminal justice system. Research should investigate whether incidents are perceived by the respondent to have been motivated by hostility or prejudice. Again, people living in residential establishments should be included.
- reviewing whether victims or perpetrators of anti-social behaviour are particularly likely to be disabled and amending practice accordingly.
4. Governments, including Secretaries of State, Scottish Ministers and the Wales Assembly Government First Minister, should regularly report on progress in improving good relations, safety and empowerment of disabled people and confidence in the criminal justice system, as well as on the incidence of hate crime, in line with their DED requirements. The figures should be broken down by broad impairment group and by ethnicity, age, gender, parental and carer status, religion and belief, and sexual orientation.
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