Letter: An altercation wrongly labelled as hate crime
Recent reports, including in the Shropshire Star, have reported on the number of hate crimes now recorded.
The Star report quoted Superintendent David McWilliam as stating that a hate crime is classed as: "Any criminal offence perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice".
This definition results from one produced by Lord Justice Scarman who held an enquiry into the 1981 Brixton Riots. He defined racial prejudice as that in the mind of the victim and not in the mind of the perpetrator.
Many crimes are plainly racially motivated or result from some other form of discrimination from the outset, but the definition could find folk in trouble for committing a hate crime even though they never intended it to be such.
If a heated argument takes place after an accident and a threat is made and the threatened person says they think it was racially motivated, instead of just an altercation after an accident, it will be classed as a hate crime.
From my own work among people of many races, I can say that some would claim the race card simply as a matter of course.
Of course, people should not be rude, abusive, threatening or commit more serious offences towards others – but that is a different matter altogether.
Richard Camp, Wellington
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