Hate crime

In June 2009, a law on homophobic and transphobic hate crime was finally passed in Scotland.

We expect the Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice)(Scotland) Act to be implemented later on this year.

Previously, unlike in England and Wales, there was no hate crime law in Scotland.

At Stonewall Scotland we've been campaigning to put this right from the very beginning - and after years of hard work, we're now a vital step closer to hate crime legislation in Scotland

In June 2009 the Scottish Parliament passed Patrick Harvie’s Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice) Scotland Bill unanimously.

The hate crime legislation will create no new offence.  Instead, it means that when someone does something that’s already a crime – from a breach of the peace right through to murder – for homophobic or transphobic reasons, sheriffs and judges will have to take account of this motivation in sentencing.

Because crimes will be officially recorded as hate crimes, at last we’ll have proper figures for the number of these crimes that take place.

Most importantly of all it’ll send a clear message – to society, to criminals, to victims, and to the criminal justice system – that hate is just not acceptable in a modern Scotland.

There are already statutory aggravations on the grounds of religion and race in Scottish law. These have worked - they've allowed police and the courts to take hate crimes seriously, and allowed proper monitoring of how many take place.

People wrongly say that this Bill will create a "heirarchy of victims", that "only straight white men won't be protected" and argue that if this bill passes we won't all be equal under the law.

But the Bill will do none of these things. What it will do is address the motivation for these attacks. We know people set out to go "gay bashing" out of pure hatred - and it's that hatred the bill attacks. What will matter under this law is the presumed sexual orientation or transgender identity of the victim - in other words, it won't actually matter whether or not the victim is lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender, only that the attacker thought they were and targetted them out of hatred.

We know that nearly one in four lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people in Scotland have been physically assaulted because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. It's time for the hate to stop.

To read about hate crime law in England and Wales, click here.

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