Race and Religious Hate Crime Conference
Friday 2 November 2012, Castle Green Hotel, Kendal
Recent hate crime statistics and feedback from a recent events and work involving Black and Minority ethnic people and faith communities and community groups in Cumbria suggests that many people do not report race and religious hate crimes and race and religious hate crime incidents; this is further supported by the successful recent prosecutions and information from community groups which indicates that Race and Religious related harassment is hugely under reported and that services including; advice agencies, education, health and social care, housing and the Criminal Justice need to do more to take action to stop it happening in the first place and if it does have effective policies and procedures and staff awareness for dealing with it.
As such three partners AWAZ Cumbria, Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) and Cumbria Constabulary are working together to hold a Race and Religious Hate Crime conference in Kendal on the Friday 2nd November with a view to:
- Raise awareness of Race / Religious Hate crime /incidents
- Agencies (Public, VCS and community ) needing to act on Race/religious Hate incidents and crime
- Partnership working to tackle Race/Religious Hate and role of existing groups/partnerships
Some of the issues to be explored on the day will include:
- Education
- identifying barriers and solutions to reporting;
- listening to the concerns in relation to barriers to reporting crimes and what agencies should be doing to increase the confidence of people to report hate crime,
- increasing awareness of the support available from the Criminal Justice System, other agencies and the Voluntary Community Sector Organisations for people who report hate crime and
- building confidence in the community.