Hate Incident Monitoring Project

What is a hate incident?

 A hate incident happens when someone is targeted because they are seen to be different. This could be because of prejudice against their age, disability, gender, race, religion/belief or sexual orientation. A hate incident may be physical, verbal or written, and can be reported by the person it affects, a witness to the incident, or anybody who heard about what happened.

In Leicestershire, the Hate Incident Monitoring Project gives people a way to report such incidents. Even though a hate incident might not be a criminal offence, it will still be taken seriously.

This project works with many different agencies including Leicestershire schools. It records hate incidents so that it can understand what sort of things are happening, and can speak to people or organisations who might be in a position to help. The project has recently spoken to head teachers and Chairs of Governors from schools across the county, who were positive about helping to record such incidents.

How are young people involved?

It’s important that people realise it’s ok to report hate incidents, and that they can speak to teachers, parents, carers, youth workers or a friends about things that have happened to them. Pupils from a Leicestershire secondary school designed two posters to promote this message,  and met with youth workers from across Leicestershire to explain their involvement and enable those workers to carry on the message to the young people they work with. These posters will be seen in schools and youth centres across the county from September, but you can view them now by downloading them from the ‘related documents’ section at the end of this article.

The young people involved in creating the posters took part in two workshops in order to make their opinions heard on subjects related to hate crime – here are some of the comments they made:

Did you feel it was an important issue to get young people involved with?

‘Yes very, only young people know how young people think and how such a poster would affect them’. - Calandra (13)

Have you ever needed to overcome experiences mentioned in the hate Incident projects in the past?

‘Yes – racism’ - Calandra (13)

What do you think needs to be done to stop these kinds of incidents in the future?

‘More discussion on the subject at school from an early age.’ Jessica (14)

‘I don’t think bullying can ever be completely stopped but may be by having better ways of dealing with bullying then what schools are doing now’. - Ben (15)

‘Primary schools should talk to the children about it so as they grow up, they realise it is wrong’. - Devina (14)

What advice would you give to other young people suffering from the same problems?

‘Tell someone so you can get the problem solved’. - Devina (14)

‘Talk to somebody e.g. parents, teachers, responsible adult’. - Jessica (14)

‘Stand up to the bully. Just tell them to shove off’ - Ben (15)