§ Ms BuckTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department (1) what percentage of racially aggravated offences have resulted in acquittals since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 came into force; and how many defendants this involved, broken down by ethnic group; [113367]
(2) how many charges relating to racially aggravated offences as defined by section 28 of the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 have been made since the Act came into force; and how many victims were alleged to be affected by the offences broken down by ethnic group. [113332]
§ Mr. Charles ClarkeInformation collected centrally indicates that 10,982 racially aggravated offences were recorded by the police in the period 1 April 1999 to 30 September 1999. No information is collected on the number of charges made for these offences, the number of victims involved or their ethnic group. 745 defendants were prosecuted in magistrates courts for racially aggravated offences in the period October 1998 to 30 June 1999 of which 261 (35 per cent.) had their prosecution terminated early and 31 (4 per cent.) had their charge dismissed. No information is available on the ethnicity of the defendants.
§ Ms BuckTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many complaints of racially aggravated offences have been made against police officers since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 came into force. [113335]
§ Mr. Charles ClarkeInformation is not routinely collected centrally on the occupations of people accused of crime. But there were 709 complaints of racial discrimination recorded against the police in 1998–99.
§ Ms BuckTo ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many racially aggravated offences (1) charged by the police have been discontinued by the Crown Prosecution Service(a) before and (b) after the case reached a magistrates court; and how many victims, broken down by ethnic group, were alleged to be affected by the offences charged; [113333]
(2) have been added as further offences to other charges preferred against defendants by the Crown Prosecution Service since the Crime and Disorder Act 1998 came into effect; and how many victims were alleged to be affected by the offences charged, broken down by ethnic group. [113334]
665W
The Solicitor-GeneralI have been asked to reply.
The information sought is not currently available and could be obtained only at disproportionate cost. However, the Crown Prosecution Service has been monitoring the prosecution of racist crime since 1995. The monitoring has been substantially revised in order to capture a wider range of information as a result of the new offences of racially aggravated crimes created by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998. The first full year of the revised scheme ends on 31 March 2000 and the Crown Prosecution Service aims to publish a report in the autumn. At that time the figures sought regarding charges for racially aggravated offences will, it is anticipated, be available. The monitoring scheme is solely offence based and does not record information about victims of racially aggravated crime either by number or ethnic group.