FOI reference: FOI-2025-3039
You asked
I have a question regarding one of your data tables from the published data on hate crime.
For Table 3.1: Percentage of hate crime incidents, by type of offence, 2017/18 to 2019/20 Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW), where in the breakdown of personal crime are instances of hate speech against a person, I believe in police recorded data this is referred to as "Public fear, alarm or distress offences" - refer to criminal acts that cause members of the public to feel afraid, threatened, or disturbed by someone's words or behaviour in public. These offences are most commonly addressed under Section 5 of the Public Order Act 1986 in England and Wales (similar laws exist in other UK jurisdictions) (their definition).
In the table, I can only see:
Hate crime, England and Wales, 2019 to 2020: data tables
PERSONAL CRIME
- Violence without injury
- Violence with injury
- Robbery
- Theft from person
- Other theft of personal property
I understand that the CSEW only collects data on crimes with an identifiable victim, but what about cases of hate speech/harassment against a specific victim? Why would these not be included?
We said
Thank you for your request.
The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) is an interviewer-administered face-to-face survey, asking people (aged 16 years and over) resident in households, about their experiences of crime in the past year. The CSEW captures a broad range of victim-based crimes with the interviewer-administered questions. It gives headline estimates of CSEW crime, which includes theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse, and violence with or without injury.
The CSEW identifies incidents within these crime types that are hate crimes and by hate crime strand. These were most recently published in the Home Office publication, ‘Hate crime, England and Wales, 2019 to 2020’. The Home Office will also be providing an update to their Hate Crime publication on 9 October 2025.
While the CSEW does not measure public order offences, it does measure experiences of harassment. It is important to note that CSEW harassment includes one-off incidents and do not necessarily meet the criteria to be classified as a crime. This is different from how the police define harassment where the behaviour must occur on more than one occasion. This is explained in the Home Office's Crime Recording Rules for frontline officers and staff guidance.
These estimates can be found in our ‘Nature of violent crime appendix tables: year ending March 2024’. Table 13 provides a breakdown of harassment by perceived motivation (e.g. religion or disability).