Promising Practice

National Police monitoring practice

Dansk Politis moniteringspraksis for hadforbrydelser
The monitoring scheme to strengthen police registration of hate crime and to have an ongoing overview of the number of hate crimes and their distribution on different motives, types of crime and crime scenes.
Country
Denmark
Type
Improve recording and data collection
Category
Flagging potential hate crimes
Monitoring progress and impact

Promising practice :

Organisation

The National Police (Rigspolitiet).

Start and end date

Ongoing (as of May 2021).

Scope

National.

Target group(s)

Victims of hate crimes, Danish police enforcement.

Funding

The National Police funds and runs the monitoring practice.

Objectives

  • Correct registration of hate crime.
  • Knowledge provided to the Danish police enforcement.

Outputs

  • An annual report on hate crime.
  • Campaigns to inform the public.

Description

  • The Police case file processing system (POLSAS) is not a statistical system but a case management system. When an offence is reported to the police, the case will be registered in POLSAS with a code associated with the specific offense. Before the case is closed, there will be registered a “decision-code” which indicates the result of the case.
  • From POLSAS it is possible to collect data on the number of reported violations of Article 266 b in the Penal code, which criminalizes hate speech offences. It is also possible to collect data on the number of charges and convictions.
  • The National Police has published an annual report on hate crime since 2015. The annual report describes the monitoring of the hate crime area. The purpose of the monitoring scheme is to strengthen the police's registration of hate crimes and to have an ongoing overview of the number of hate crimes and their distribution on different types of motives, types of crime and crime scenes.

Critical success factors

  • Educated police enforcement.
  • Informed public.
  • Correct monitoring.

Actors involved in the design and implementation of the practice

The national police.

Monitoring and evaluation

As of May 2021, a revised monitoring system is being implemented within the National Police, which will increase the ability to disaggregate data on type of bias motivation or target group. The revised data gathering system is based on the implementation of a more systematic logging of hate motivation when recording offences within the case file processing system POLSAS. The implementation of this revised monitoring scheme is supported by different initiatives by National Police ranging from specialized police training on the topic of hate crime to a more systematic controlling of recorded hate crime / hate speech offences.

Publicly available contact details

Danish National Police
Polititorvet 14
1780 Copenhagen V
Tel:+45 3314 8888
Email:politi@politi.dk