Originally a comment by tigger_the_wing on Willoughby feels hunted.

One last thing: the information bar at the bottom gives the number of ‘hate crimes’ for the ‘year to March 2022’. That implies that it’s for the first quarter of 2022, when in fact it covers the year ending in March 2022; in other words, the twelve months from April 2021 to March 2022 inclusive.

There are figures here.

Hate crime is defined as ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.’ This common definition was agreed in 2007 by the police, Crown Prosecution Service, Prison Service (now the National Offender Management Service) and other agencies that make up the criminal justice system. There are five centrally monitored strands of hate crime:

• race or ethnicity

• religion or beliefs

• sexual orientation

• disability, and

• transgender identity

Putting aside the Stonewalling of last category (the protected characteristic in law is ‘gender reassignment’), the figures for ‘hate crimes’ – which are actual crimes (such as assault) which have been deemed to have been aggravated by a motive based on hatred of the target’s perceived membership of one of the protected groups; hating someone because of who they are isn’t a crime in and of itself – the figures given are as follows:

Key results

• in year ending March 2022, there were 155,841 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, an increase of 26% from year ending March 2021 (124,104 offences)

• there were 109,843 race hate crimes, 8,730 religious hate crimes, 26,152 sexual orientation hate crimes, 14,242 disability hate crimes and 4,355 transgender hate crimes in year ending March 2022

• there were annual increases in all five strands of hate crime, ranging from 19% for race hate crimes to 56% for transgender hate crimes

• the upward trend in hate crime seen in recent years is likely to have been mainly driven by improvements in crime recording by the police; there have been spikes in hate crime following certain events such as the EU Referendum and the terrorist attacks in 2017

• it is uncertain the extent to which the increases seen this year continue the pattern of improvements in police recording or represent a real increase in hate crime; the rise seen in the latest year may also have been affected by the lower levels of crime recorded in year ending March 2021 due to the COVID 19 pandemic restrictions; trends may also differ by strand as some crime types have been more affected by improvements in recording practices than others

• as in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for over two-thirds of all such offences (70%; 109,843 offences); racially motivated hate crimes increased by 19 per cent between year ending March 2021 and year ending March 2022

• religious hate crimes increased by 37 per cent (to 8,730 offences), up from 6,383 in the previous year; this was the highest number of religious hate crimes recorded since the time series began in year ending March 2012

• sexual orientation hate crimes increased by 41% (to 26,152), disability hate crimes by 43% (to 14,242) and transgender identity hate crimes by 56% (to 4,355); these percentage increases were much higher than seen in recent years

• over half (51%) of the hate crimes recorded by the police were for public order offences and a 41% were for violence against the person offences; five per cent were recorded as criminal damage and arson offences

(Emphasis mine)

• race or ethnicity…………………..109,843 (70.48%)

• religion or beliefs…………………….8,730 (5.60%)

• sexual orientation…………………..26,152 (16.78%)

• disability…………………………….14,242 (9.14%)

• transgender identity…………………4,355 (2.79%)

Those add up to more than 100% of the total, presumably because some crimes ticked more than one box.

What is telling is the bit I’ve italicised. The police seem to be recording a lot more relatively minor incidents as ‘crime’ than they used to, and are quicker to label them ‘hate crime’ (and don’t get me started on ‘non-crime hate incidents’). Meanwhile, serious crime is not being dealt with. More from the link which explains:

Hate crimes are a subset of notifiable offences recorded by the police. In year ending March 2022, three per cent of such offences recorded by the police were identified as being hate crimes. This proportion has gradually increased from one per cent in year ending March 2013, as the police have improved their identification of what constitutes a hate crime, especially across public order and violence against the person offences which account for 92 per cent of hate crime offences collectively.

The annual crime rate in Great Britain is roughly 80 crimes per thousand people (population about 60.8 million). Acording to those figures above, hate crime incidents are about 2.56 per thousand people. Not nice, especially for the victims, but a very small proportion.

Those hate crimes perpetrated against people with a ‘gender identity’?

0.07 incidents per thousand people.

Three percent of crime is hate crime, and three percent of those are perpetrated against people who claim that it was motivated by a hatred of ‘gender identity’. Half of those are ‘public order offences’; i.e. someone saying something that someone didn’t like. Mr. Willoughby is taking a minuscule fraction of a small fraction of crime, and making it out to be a huge problem – for him. I’m having a hard time imagining a more narcissistic viewpoint; or a more dangerous approach to reporting crime than interviewing him for something which is exremely unlikely ever to affect him.