Top UK prosecutor: Crack down on disability hate crime
October 6th, 2008
From the [UK] Telegraph, BBC, [UK] Independent:
Sir Ken MacDonald (left), the UK’s highest ranking prosecutor, said this week that disability hate crime is widespread and the criminal justice system is failing to address it. He urged UK police and prosecutors to seek tougher sentences against those who victimize people with disabilities.
“This is a scar on the conscience of criminal justice,” he said in a speech. “All institutions involved in criminal justice, including my own, share the responsibility.”
Macdonald said the biggest barrier to effective prosecution is a failure by law enforcement personnel to perceive that people with disabilities are targets of systematic hostility and prejudice. A 2003 law in the UK allows courts to punish offenders more severely if a crime is motivated by a victim’s disability or sexual orientation, but the measure is rarely used.
Research by the charity Mencap says people with learning disabilities in the UK live in fear and face harassment on a regular basis. The UK has seen a number of murders and acts of violence against people with disabilities over the past year.
See also: This hatred is borne out of fear of disability — by Ian Macrae in the [UK] Indendependent. An excerpt:
Disabled people’s impairments frighten people because they show them what they could become. Hate is too easily borne out of that fear. And that is what the judiciary, the police and the criminal justice system – and indeed society at large – have to come to terms with. Disabled people create fear and hatred in just the same way as people from ethnic minorities do for the racist; women do for the rapist, or gay people do for the homophobe.
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