A campaign to target homophobic hate crime is being launched at this year’s Eisteddfod by Gwent Police, Gwent Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Stonewall Cymru, as they join forces to raise awareness of the crime.
Hate crime against lesbian, gay and bisexual people nationally is under reported. A Stonewall survey found that 1 in 5 had experienced homophobic hate crime incidents but only 1 in 10 had reported to the Police. In Gwent, homophobic hate crime reported incidents have decreased slightly from 38 in 2008/9 to 32 in 2009/10.
Gwent Police, in recent years, has done much to encourage reporting of hate crime including setting up a dedicated Community Cohesion Team to give specialist advice and guidance to investigating officers and victims, delivering awareness sessions within communities and monitoring hate crimes that are being dealt with across the force area.
The CPS has also taken steps to ensure that victims of homophobic and transphobic hate crime are treated fairly within the criminal justice system. A new policy has been introduced to improve the way that victims and witnesses are treated by the CPS and the organisation also now publishes statistics relating to these types of offences. Hate Crime Scrutiny Panels give community representatives the chance to review cases and recommend improvements
The most recent initiative sees criminal justice agencies joining forces to distribute drinks mats with anti homophobic hate crime messages on them. They will firstly be distributed at drinking venues on site at this years Eisteddfod and they will be distributed in pubs and clubs throughout the Gwent area. Gwent Police and the Crown Prosecution Service jointly funded the 15,000 drinks mats.
Similar drinks mats were launched at last year’s Eisteddfod in Bala by North Wales Police, North Wales CPS and their partner agencies. They were welcomed by the community and the initiative has now been expanded to include posters on buses. One gay resident commented:
“I think the campaign over the Bala Eisteddfod was a huge success and I’m glad it’s being done in Gwent as well. There had been a number of local events that had made us feel unsafe but we found the beer mats became a talking point and there is a change in people’s attitudes – it seems more of a mature place to be out in.”
Chief Superintendent Paul Symes, Gwent Police, said:
“Hate crime will not be tolerated within the Gwent Police Force area. This initiative is important firstly in raising awareness among the community that this is recognised as a crime and secondly to ensure that those who suffer it know exactly who to call and that it’s going to be dealt with seriously,”
Jim Brisbane, Chief Crown Prosecutor for Gwent CPS, added: “We want to ensure that people living in Gwent have access to justice and are treated fairly.
One key part of our role within local communities is to work with lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people and criminal justice agencies to build people’s confidence to come forward and report hate crimes.
Initiatives like this really help us to get the message across that we are working hard to support our local communities.”
Jenny Porter, Community Liaison Officer for Stonewall Cymru said:
“We applaud the work the criminal justice agencies are doing to raise awareness of how seriously they treat homophobic hate crime and urge victims and witnesses to report any such incident to the police.”
