Muslims continue to be the most targeted group in England and Wales when it comes to hate crime, according to recently published Home Office data.
The figures, which recorded hate crimes from March 2023-24, show that there has been an increase in religious hate crimes targeting Muslims with 3,866 offences, up 13% from 3,432 recorded the previous year.
Almost two in five (38%) religious hate crimes targeted Muslims even though the figures do not include the anti-Muslim riots in the summer.
Overall, there was a 25% increase in police recorded religious hate crime over the latest year, up from 8,370 to 10,484 offences. This is the highest annual count since the hate crime collection began in the year ending March 2012.
The increase in offences was driven by a sharp rise in religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people since the beginning of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians.
Annually, there were 3,282 religious hate crimes targeted at Jewish people in the year ending March 2024, more than double the number recorded the previous year (1,543).
These offences accounted for a third (33%) of all religious hate crimes in the last year. By comparison, the proportion in the previous year was 20%.
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Other key results include:
- There were 140,561 hate crimes recorded by the police in England and Wales, a decrease of 5% from the year ending March 2023 (147,645 offences), and the second consecutive annual fall.
- There were 98,799 race hate crimes, a fall of 5% from the previous year when there were 103,625 offences, which was driven by decreases in public fear, alarm or distress and malicious communication offences.
- As in previous years, the majority of hate crimes were racially motivated, accounting for 7 in 10 of all such offences
- There were falls in the other three strands of hate crime; sexual orientation hate crimes fell by 8%, disability hate crimes by 18% and transgender hate crimes by 2%.
