New research report on barriers to reporting hate crime in Victoria

This newly released report published by the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies presents the results of a year long research on barriers to reporting hate crimes in Victoria (Australia).

Key takeaways include:

  1. Participants are aware that they should report hate crime, but when they are victimised, there are barriers that prevent them from reporting. 96.9% (N = 252) of our survey participants reported that they would report a knife assault to the police, and 92.7% (N = 241) that they would report a physical assault to the police. However, when asked about their real experiences of victimisation, only 5 out of 13 participants reported to police being the victim of a prejudice motivated violent physical attack. Only 1 out of 5 participants reported to police being the victim of a prejudice motivated sexual assault.
  2. Participants proposed numerous solutions to remove barriers to reporting. They include education and awareness campaigns, improving the police response to hate crime and hate incidents, and creating an integrated multi-channel reporting system. It is important to note that some of the suggested solutions are already in place, but some community members were not aware of them.
  3. Participants reported levels of hate crime and hate incident victimisation that are much higher (between 40% and 87%, depending on the community) than the average levels of self-reported victimisation in the Victorian population (26%, according to a recent Victorian survey).
  4. The most trusted institution for reporting prejudice-motivated incidents was the human right commission, followed by community organisations and by law enforcement agencies.
  5. The most preferred reporting tool was the phone, followed by face-to-face reporting, websites, apps, Facebook and Instagram.

The full report can be found here.