Hate crime statistics

Organisation

Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention (Brottsförebyggande rådet, Brå).

Start and end date

Start date:

2006.

End date:

Ongoing (as of May 2021). Since 2016, the research has been conducted and published every second year (before that, the research was conducted and published every year).

Scope

National.

Target group(s)

• The criminal justice system.
• Non-governmental organisations.
• Researchers.

Funding

The practice is funded by annual appropriations from the government.

Objectives

• Produce high-quality hate crime statistics.
• Produce data that allow for evaluation of the police’s ability to identify and record hate crimes.
• Increase awareness about hate crimes by providing information about the structure and development of such crimes.

Outputs

• Hate crime reports. The latest report from 2018 is available in Swedish, and an English summary is also available.
• Hate crime statistics for use in further research.

Description

Every second year, researchers at Brå produce hate crime statistics and a comprehensive hate crime report. The research is based on information obtained from initial police reports on crimes committed. In these reports, the police have the option of using a hate crime flag to indicate a potential hate crime. The researchers at Brå manually examine all reports in a calendar year that have this hate crime flag and, based on the information in the reports, assess whether or not the reported crimes had a hate crime motivation.

The following statistical units and variables are included in the research:

• principal offence and secondary offence or offences;
• hate crime motivation or motivations;
• gender of the victim;
• location of the reported crime;
• relationship between the offender and the victim;
• regional distribution of reported hate crimes;
• final decisions from police and prosecutors with regard to the principal offence recorded.

The following bias motivations are coded separately:

• xenophobia/racism (of which Afrophobia, antigypsyism and hate crimes against the Sámi people are subcategories)
• antisemitism
• Islamophobia
• Christianophobia
• other anti-religious motivations
• sexual orientation
• transphobia.

Details in the reports that are considered to meet Brå’s definition of a hate crime are coded. A second researcher double-checks the coded variables and the assessment of whether or not a report includes a hate crime.

Critical success factors

• The method primarily aims to evaluate the police’s handling of crimes with hate motivations rather than to estimate the actual prevalence of hate crimes in society. The method provides an insight into how well the police pay attention to hate crime motivations in reports and which biases are identified.
• The detailed police reports allow the researchers to assess if the reported crimes have hate motivations.
• At least two researchers are involved in the production of the statistics to ensure the reliability of the data.
• The detailed codebook.

Actors involved in the design and implementation of the practice

The practice does not use a participatory approach. However, a usability survey that includes actors in the criminal justice system, researchers and non-governmental organisations is carried out intermittently to ensure the relevance of the product. The methodology is also established among the main target groups.

Monitoring and evaluation

An internal evaluation is always carried out at the end of the production cycle.

Publicly available contact details

Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention
Email: info@bra.se