§ Mr. Stephen O'BrienTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many complaints in relation to allegations of racism(a) were made, (b) were investigated by the police, (c) resulted in prosecutions and (d) resulted in successful prosecutions in (i) 1999 and (ii) 2000. [156076]
§ Mr. Charles Clarke[holding answer 29 March 2001]: Information recorded centrally shows that the number of racist incidents recorded by the police throughout England and Wales for the financial year 1998–99 was 23,049 and for 1999–2000 was 47,814. These are incidents recorded either under the Association of Chief Police Officers' definition of a racist incident
any incident in which it appears to the reporting or investigating officer that the complaint involves an element of racial motivation, or any incident which includes an allegation of racial motivation made by any person562W which applied until February 1999 or under the new simplified definition of a racist incident proposed by the Lawrence Inquiry, adopted at that time ("any incident which is perceived to be racist by the victim or any other person"). Incidents included here are therefore wider than the normal definition of a crime in the Crime Statistics and include low level harassment.Information has been recorded centrally since 1999, relating to racially aggravated offences (the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 introduced a series of new racially aggravated offences from 30 September 1998), and published in 'Statistics on Race and the Criminal Justice System' on 18 January 2001 (a copy of which is in the Library). During the financial year 1999–2000 21,750 racially aggravated offences were recorded by police throughout England and Wales, of which 34 per cent. were detected by police. 3,815 racially aggravated offences were prosecuted at magistrates court. 1,073 (28 per cent.) resulted in convictions and 1,755 (46 per cent.) were either terminated early or acquitted and 990 (26 per cent.) cases were committed to he Crown Court for trial. A further 178 persons were tried at Crown Court, of whom approximately one half were convicted.
In terms of figures relating to investigations by police of these offences and any details regarding prosecutions relating to racist incidents, data are unavailable.