As promised here’s a followup on my first article about the dark numbers within hate crimes in Denmark.
The numbers presented in the last article clearly shows that there is a huge amount of hate crimes in Denmark that are either not registered as hate crimes, discarded by the police due to lack of evidence or never reported to the police.
These dark numbers present a problem in the danish society because
Why are so many cases not registered correctly by the police?
Why is it so difficult as a victim to prove the motive?
Why are so many people reluctant to report hate crimes to the police?
What are we doing about it?
Why are so many cases not registered correctly by the police?
There can be several reasons why many cases are not registered as hate crimes although the victims feel that criminal acts towards them have a racial motive. The most obvious reason is the lack of or insufficient evidence presented to the police and therefore lack of investigation into that motive by the police. Another reason is that many police officers lack an understanding of the effect that racially motivated crimes have on the victims. This lack is often perceived as a disregard of the racial aspects of the crime.
Why is it so difficult as a victim to prove the motive?
In a big portion of racially motivated crimes, the racial aspect of the crime is verbal. Therefore, it is often difficult if not impossible for the victim to prove the racial motive, unless witnesses were present at the moment the crime was committed and have an understanding of or sympathy for the effects of racially motivated crimes. if there is no understanding or sympathy the witnesses will be reluctant to see the importance of racial aspect of the motive and therefore there is a greater chance that the witnesses will not support the claim of racial motive
Why are so many people reluctant to report hate crimes to the police?
There are two main reasons people are reluctant to report hate crimes to the police. One is the general idea, amongst minorities, that the police don’t care and therefore will do nothing if a hate crime is reported. Another is the victim’s ability to brush the hate crime off and/or find another motive for the criminal act other than a racial motive. This is the result of the victim being told time after time that the racially motivated discrimination they experience is not actually racially motivated. The victim simply misunderstood the situation.
What are we doing about it?
As mentioned in the first article, several organs both international and domestic have pointed out the issues Denmark has in this area. One of these international organs is the CERD.
In 2015 CERD published their Concluding observations report on denmark. In paragraph 9, they raised concern about the national integration barometer indicating that 45 percent of ethnic minorities felt that they had experienced discrimination based on their ethnicity. They also expressed concern about the low number of discrimination court cases considering the number of people who felt discriminated against based on ethnicity.
In June of this year the ECRI published their concluding report on Denmark. In this report, they raised concern about the lack of available organized data. It is recommended that hate crime data be organized by category of offence, type of hate and target group. Part of the reason for ECRI’s concern is that Denmark has two registration systems: one system for registering reported offences and judicial outcomes and another system for registering racist and homo-/transphobic hate crimes and hate speech incidents. Although this second system can separate data by category of offence, type of hate motivation and target group, it does not provide information about the judicial outcomes of said crimes. As such, there is no way to track cases from registration to conclusion and therefore no way to know the extent to which registered hate crimes are successfully/ unsuccessfully prosecuted in Denmark. This shows how far behind Denmark is and might be part of the explanation as to why Denmark fails to see the magnitude of this problem within its borders.
In 2011 CERD published an extension of the ICERD called CERD34. CERD34 is a list of 64 recommendations on how to prevent and combat racism and discrimination against people of african decent. Among those 64 recommendations are:
27. Take measures to prevent any dissemination of ideas of racial superiority and inferiority or ideas which attempt to justify violence, hatred or discrimination against people of African descent.
37. Ensure the prosecution of all persons who commit racially motivated crimes against people of African descent and guarantee the provision of adequate compensation for victims of such crimes.
Denmark, together with other countries that signed the ICERD in 1971, was given a deadline of 31-12-2019 to reply as to how the CERD34 recommendations are being implemented. To date, Denmark has failed to live up to this deadline and has failed to implement many of the 64 recommendations.
So even though the danish state has been made aware of these issues again and again from various organs, they have not been able to make any significant changes to the way they register hate crimes nor have they made victims feel more comfortable about reporting hate crimes.
The dark numbers show that there is a serious need for Denmark to take action in the fight against racism. This is why we need the danish state to implement CERD34 and at the same time live up to the human rights they agreed to uphold as a member of the ECRI and ICERD.