Express & Star comment: Hate crime not a political football
On the face of it the 11 per cent rise in hate crime reports in the Black Country last year is worrying.
But with the departure of Alison Saunders as Director of Public Prosecutions will there be less emphasis on this area of offending in the future?
There are, undoubtedly, genuine cases of hate crime in our area, but this sensitive issue has to be more than a political football.
There must be credibility to all the complaints before they are recorded and the response must be proportionate.
This is too important an issue to be pushed under the carpet, but efforts to reduce hate crime will only be successful when all reports are credible and less subject to interpretation one way or another.
Until then many reports are largely irrelevant and may just have been taken from people’s perceptions of an incident.
Hate crime reporting is too much of a grey area and it needs much more clarity.
The genuine cases of hate crime are getting submerged by the tide of minor contentious allegations.
