Race-hate crimes leap 20pc

LONDON - Figures published by Britain's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) show that prosecutions of racially aggravated offences have increased by 2500 since race-hate laws were introduced in 1999. In the past two years, these prosecutions have jumped by more than 20 per cent.

The report confirms fears raised by Muslim and Asian leaders that there is a link between the war on terror and a rise in racist incidents.

Last year, Director of Public Prosecutions Ken Macdonald warned that a growth in race-hate crime and a sharp rise in the number of young Asian men being stopped by the police threatened to alienate Britain's Muslim communities.

This picture is supported by prosecutions of religiously aggravated crime, which has more than doubled in the past year, with Muslims identified as the victims in half of all cases.

Of the 49 cases, one involved a passenger in a minicab who subjected the Muslim driver to a torrent of racially and religiously abusive language. After pleading guilty to religiously aggravated common assault he received four months' imprisonment. Macdonald told the Independent last year that the typical race-hate element of a crime involved white youths calling Asians "Mullahs, bin Ladens or Taleban".

The service said there was also evidence of interracial religious hatred crime. A 14-year-old Muslim boy threw a lighted aerosol at a 12-year-old Sikh boy, setting his hair and turban alight. He was convicted last year of religiously aggravated actual bodily harm and sentenced to a three-month action plan order and made to pay the victim £200 ($533) compensation and £100 costs.

Between April 2003 and the end of March 2004, the service dealt with 4728 racially aggravated cases and prosecuted 3616 of them. The figures also suggest that other cases are not being prosecuted because of difficulties getting witnesses to give evidence in court.

Macdonald said: "I am reassured that the conviction rate for racially aggravated offences remains high but there is still work to be done. In this report witness difficulties accounted for 26 per cent of dropped charges. We have high hopes that the witness care units, which are being rolled out to all 42 criminal justice areas in England and Wales, will provide more dedicated care to witnesses to help them attend court for all types of case."

The CPS pledged to tackle race crimes more vigorously after a report by its independent inspectorate in May 2002 found that prosecutors were wrongly reducing charges in more than one in four racist incidents. Charges of racially aggravated crimes were regularly downgraded to remove the race element, while in other cases prosecutors accepted defendants' guilty pleas to the crime minus the racial aggravation.

The conviction rate for all those charged remains high at 86 per cent compared to 85 per cent in 2002-2003.

The breakdown of religiously aggravated offences mirrors racially aggravated offences. Public order was the predominant offence, followed by assault, criminal damage and harassment. Most of the charges were prosecuted in the magistrates court. In magistrates, crown and youth courts, the overall conviction rate was 77 per cent on religiously aggravated charges and 86 per cent on all charges.

Macdonald told the Independent last year, after his first year in charge, that the war on terror had sparked a growth in Islamophobia and led to a more divided society.

He warned: "Terrorism is creating divisions between our diverse societies. We have to be careful that we respect diverse cultures and we prosecute cases without discrimination.

"What the figures are showing is that a large number of young Asian men have been stopped by the police."

He added: "This is a period of heightened security around the issue of terrorism and that's a position that has to be managed. It would be dangerous for us to alienate whole communities. We just have to tread carefully."

The Macpherson definition of a racist incident, as defined in a recent report, is deliberately wide in order to encourage the reporting of racist incidents to the police.

But the CPS notes: "Inevitably, in some cases, despite the case having been reported as a racist incident, there will not be sufficient evidence to justify prosecution for a racially aggravated offence under the definition in the Crime and Disorder Act 1998."

- INDEPENDENT