Hate crimes and hate incidents
We want Camden to be a safe, strong and equal place for everyone who lives, works and studies here.
If you witness harmful, hateful behaviour in our borough, or experience it yourself, there is help available.
We encourage anyone who witnesses or experiences this behaviour to report it. Even if you don’t report it when it happens, please do still report it.
Reporting hateful behaviour can help us stop it from happening to others. This behaviour may be a criminal offence, known as a hate crime. You will also help us and the police to understand the extent of hate crime in your local area so we can respond to it better.
On these pages you’ll find information about how to recognise hate crime, how to report it, and where to get support.
Recognising hate crime
If you see or experience any incident that is perceived by the victim or any other person to be racist, homophobic, transphobic, or due to a person’s religion, belief, gender identity or disability, it may be a hate crime.
This could be verbal abuse, online abuse, threats or threatening behaviour, bullying, physical violence, robbery, or damage to property, and it’s important you report it.
You don’t need to know or make the decision as to whether the act you see or experience is a criminal offence or not – you can just report it to the police or to other organisations and they will investigate and determine that.
What is a hate incident?
A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, believes is motivated by someone’s hostility or prejudice towards them because of any of the above characteristics.
Not all hate incidents will necessarily be criminal offences, but they still need to be reported and recorded by the police. In some cases, victims of hate incidents may not feel comfortable reporting the matter directly to the police. They may be more comfortable reporting it to another organisation, or someone they are familiar with, in a location that is known to them. On the next page you can find a number of different ways to report these.
What is intersectional hate crime?
This is when more than characteristic motivates someone’s hateful behaviour.
Many victims of hate crime have more than one characteristic – for example they might be a member of the LGBTQI+ community as well as being Black or Muslim. Around 12% of hate crime offences in 2018/19 were estimated to have involved more than one motivating factor. The majority of these were hate crimes related to both race and religion.