Hate Crime, Communities in Control

Communities Inc has been awarded a grant from the Nottingham Police & Crime Commissioner’s Office, Community Safety Fund to run a project called ‘Hate Crime, Communities in Control’. Our project is designed to strengthen and increase hate crime reporting mechanisms, through community based organisations. When local people experience hate crime they are more likely to have a connection with these organisations and therefore greater confidence in with regards to reporting the incident.

For the last 4 years Nottinghamshire has had no focused hate crime reporting infrastructure which is locally run or managed. The main reason for not having a system is the cut in public funds, but through our existing networks and knowledge of hate crime reporting, we propose to run a pilot initiative that will achieve the following objectives:

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• Training for up to 20 local organisations in how to record and report hate crime & promote community cohesion

• Improve hate crime reporting through local organisations

• An increase in the number of hate crime reporting points across Nottinghamshire

• Improved handling of hate-crime incidents, leading to greater public confidence

• The production of a hate crime reporting manual to be used by 20 local organisations including frontline (mainstream and specialist)  third sector organisations, religious groups  & public agencies.

• Better coordinated reporting, meaning that the Police will be provided with much more accurate information to act upon and to that end more effective preventative measures can be put into place.

• Creation of a unique and highly recognisable logo/ brand to be displayed at all reporting centres taking part in this initiative

• An end of project conference to disseminate the manual and provide learning from the project to a wide range of stakeholders

• Work towards the development of a countywide hate-crime reporting infrastructure, based on local needs, to be established after the pilot using lessons learnt.

The launch event for “Hate crime- communities in control”, held on the 28th November 2o13, was a real success.  To see more information and photos from the event,  please click here.  To see the video from the event, follow this link (credits: Savanna Nolan)

SECOND PHASE:

In 2013 Communities Inc. developed the project ‘Hate Crime: Communities In Control’, which was designed to strengthen and increase hate crime reporting through community based organisations.  These organisations are often led by people from within the community and a therefore accessible and trusted by local people. Many of these groups address discrimination and inequalities in their day- to-day work and so are ideal,(with support) to be a place where victims of hate crime can go with confidence to discuss their experience and if appropriate get help to report an  incident of hate crime to the police.

The project was the first of its kind in Nottinghamshire and has received lots of positive feedback from participants and the wider community. Due to this success, Communities Inc has again been supported by Nottinghamshire Police & Crime Commissions Office to run a second phase of the project, which will focus on further strengthening the hate crime reporting system.

Building on the first phase, the new programme  involved infrastructure organisations and those with a physical base and will target organisations from the North Nottingham area, including the Bassetlaw area. Training was  provided to organisations wishing to become third-party reporting centres and they  each received a pack containing all the paperwork, publicity materials and reporting forms needed to support the local community.

The organisations trained to become reporting centres include NG7, Meadows Advice Group, NCVS, Langold Centre, Now Church, Hodsock Parish Council, A1 Housing, Mind, Hope, CSL, BCVS and Centre Place.

To access a map of the third party hate crime reporting centres, click here. You can now download a  copy of the updated Hate Crime Reporting Guide by following this link.