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:
- 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.
- 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.
- 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).
- The most trusted institution for reporting prejudice-motivated incidents was the human right commission, followed by community organisations and by law enforcement agencies.
- 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.