The States of Jersey Police have revealed the number of reported hate crimes are steadily declining.

A 'hate crime' is defined as any behaviour caused by hostility, prejudice or hatred and can include racial, faith-based and homophobic abuse. 

32 hate-related crimes have been recorded so far this year in Jersey.

This is on-track to be less than the 61 incidents reported in 2019, and the 44 in 2023. 

Inspector David Turnbull from Community Policing tells us which hate crimes he's seeing the most in the island: 

"Generally, racial abuse is always the highest and many of those (incidents) may be around different ethnic members of our community. That's followed quite closely with homophobic or LGBTQ+ related hate.

"The very low figures are around disability, (and) faith is very low. We are very fortunate with everything that's going on in the world at the moment that we remain a very tolerant island and faith-related incidents are very low.

"These (types of crimes) could involve singling someone out to do with their religion, targeting religious buildings, as we've seen all across the UK and Europe with the current Israel-Gaza conflict."

Jersey Police anti-hate posters

Despite the downward trend on reported hate crimes, Inspector Turnbull is worried some victims are not coming forward: 

"There's also a slight caveat (to the lower numbers) in that I'm pretty sure there is under-reporting and a lot of people may not feel that they need to report to the police or want to.

"There is absolutely that possibility, and that's not just across hate-related crimes but across crimes generally.

"We will always have those people that may feel like 'Do you know what? I'll just get on with it, deal with it, I'm not going to bother the police with that, they're busy and there's not a lot they can do.' - which is not true at all.

"We would rather people did report to us to make sure that we can respond appropriately."

You can report a hate crime by contacting the States of Jersey Police on 01534 612612 or speak to Stop Hate UK for further advice.