Statistics

In 1999, the risk of being the victim of a racially motivated incident was considerably higher for members of minority ethnic groups than for White people.

The highest risk was for Pakistani and Bangladeshi people at 4.2 per cent, followed by 3.6 per cent for Indian people and 2.2 per cent for Black people. This compared with 0.3 per cent for White people.

Racially motivated incidents represented 12 per cent of all crime against minority ethnic people compared with 2 per cent for White people.

According to the British Crime Survey the estimated number of racially motivated offences in England and Wales fell from 390,000 in 1995 to 280,000 in 1999. The number of racially motivated incidents against Black, Indian, Pakistani, and Bangladeshi people also fell, from 145,000 in 1995 to 98,000 in 1999. This indicates that increased levels of racially motivated incidents as recorded by police statistics, relate to improvements in recording and higher levels of reporting such incidents.

Emotional reactions to racially motivated incidents were generally more severe than for non-racially motivated incidents. In 1999, 42 per cent of victims of racially motivated crime said that they had been 'very much affected' by the incident, compared with 19 per cent of victims of other sorts of crime. Black victims were most likely to report being 'very much affected', 55 per cent compared with 41 per cent for both Asian and White victims.

Indian, Bangladeshi and Pakistani people are more likely to be victims of household crime than Black or White people. Indians were particularly more at risk of burglary than others.

Published on 12 December 2002 - Courtesy of National Statistics Online