Hate crime

Hate crime

Hate crime is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic’ (Home Office). There are five monitored strands of hate crime:

• Race or ethnicity
• Religion
• Sexual orientation
• Disability
• Transgender identity

There were 944 recorded hate crime offences in Southampton during 2024/25, which is a -0.4% decline on the 948 recorded in 2023/24. Across England and Wales, there was a +2% increase in police-recorded hate crimes compared with the previous year. National data for this year should be interpreted cautiously due to the Metropolitan Police Service’s switch to the CONNECT crime recording system in February 2024. Previously, one hate crime flag could cover multiple linked offences, inflating counts. The new system records each offence separately, so MPS figures for 2024/25 are excluded from national totals, and long-term trends may overstate hate crime volumes. Southampton’s data is unaffected, but national comparisons require care given MPS’s large share of recorded hate crime.

A hate crime can have multiple motivating factors (strands). Race continues to be the most frequently recorded motivating factor of hate crime in Southampton (67.6% in 2024/25), with the Home Office also finding the majority of hate crimes across England and Wales to be racially motivated (71%). The second most frequent motivating factor in Southampton is sexual orientation (11.9%), followed by disability (8.3%).

The main drivers for increases in hate crime in the last decade, are thought to be greater public confidence to report hate crime and improvements in police recording. Hate crime in Southampton has experienced a decline for the second consecutive year.

The fall in hate crimes recorded nationally in 2022/23 and 2023/24 was partly linked to new guidance on recording non‑crime hate incidents (NCHIs), first published by the College of Policing in 2022 and updated in June 2023. This guidance asked officers to assess whether genuine hostility was present or whether an incident might instead reflect lawful free expression. Although aimed at NCHIs, it likely encouraged wider scrutiny over what qualifies as a hate crime. Together with the MPS’s recent data‑quality issues, these changes make long‑term national trends difficult to interpret, which may also have an impact on local trends, particularly around NCHIs.

There is evidence to suggest that there have been short-term genuine rises in hate crime following trigger events, such as terrorist attacks or political events. For example, increases in hate crime were seen around the EU Referendum in June 2016, terrorist attacks in 2017 and the Black Lives Matter protests and far-right counter protests in summer 2020.

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary note that there are greater concentrations of hate crime in densely populated and deprived areas, with neighbour disputes and the night-time economy cited as common triggers. This continues to be evidenced locally, with the highest rate of hate crimes recorded in Bargate ward (9.5 hate crimes per 1k population), followed by Bevois (6.4 per 1k) and Shirley (6.2 per 1k) wards. All of which had significantly higher rates of hate crime compared to the Southampton average (3.7 hate crimes per 1k population).

A summary report and slide set produced as part of the 2024/25 Strategic Assessment are available to download below. The interactive community safety dashboard can be accessed using the link below. For more information on crime in Southampton, see the Safe City Strategic Assessment page.