Confronting hate crime offenders with how their attacks have affected their victims has stopped them doing it again, early results from a new police scheme suggest.
The first available figures from Sussex Police’s new restorative justice scheme show none of the 22 offenders who first took part have gone on to commit more hate crimes – and 20 have not reoffended at all.
Under the Restore DiverCity scheme, which started in 2019, victims can opt to meet perpetrators face to face, write a letter or be represented by a community member to explain how the incident affected them.
As well as showing offenders the impact of their crimes, the scheme also helps give victims more control over how justice is served.
Alex Hyatt, head of restorative justice at Sussex Police said: “A lot of people don’t go to prison for ‘low level’ hate crime offences, so you could wait a long time for something to go to court or for someone to get a victim surcharge.
“The offender may get a community order of 20 hours or whatever it is, but that can feel possibly quite disappointing as an outcome for a community or as a person has been the victim of that crime.
“I think sometimes it can be probably quite frustrating, quite disappointing as an outcome, especially when we’ve heard from community members, actually, they just want the person not to do it again.
“It really is about empowering people to talk about how it really impacted them, how it has made them feel, because hate crime is personal, it’s not like burglary, and it does impact people differently.
“A lot of people don’t go to prison for ‘low level’ hate crime offences, so you could wait a long time for something to go to court or for someone to get a victim surcharge.
“The offender may get a community order of 20 hours or whatever it is, but that can feel possibly quite disappointing as an outcome for a community or as a person has been the victim of that crime.
“I think sometimes it can be probably quite frustrating, quite disappointing as an outcome, especially when we’ve heard from community members, actually, they just want the person not to do it again.
“The other thing is, if you give someone 30 hours under probation or a community order, they don’t ever have to address what they’ve done.
“We allow this kind of safe space to be opened up. We allow people to say what happened, and we make sure that the victim or the person is okay with that language being used again.”
The Restore DiverCity restorative justice scheme can be used even where offenders are not taken to court. Both offenders and victims can ask to take part.
If victims want to take part, they can be involved as much or as little as they want in the communication.
It can also be used for hate crime where there isn’t a specific victim.
Mr Hyatt said: “We had some chanting at a football match. A man at the Amex was chanting some homophobic football chants but of course, that’s not an individual.
“So there isn’t a victim per se, because it wasn’t directed at any person, it was just something being chanted in a general direction.
“Somebody still complained to a steward, who advised the police and then police got involved, and we were able to do Restore DiverCity.”
In its first three years, there have been around 35 referrals to the scheme, with more opting to take part every year.
Longer term outcomes have been recorded for the first 22 offenders taking part in the scheme, but not for the 13 most recent.
Government data says that hate crime in England and Wales has risen this year by 26 percent from 2020-21.
As in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for over two thirds of such offences.
