British Prime Minister David Cameron has honored a campaign promise by requiring police nationwide to record anti-Muslim hate crimes. Current records are spotty. Some police forces, including London’s Scotland Yard, do record anti-Muslim crimes, but others do not.
Explaining the move, the government said:
creating a separate category across the board would “enable police, prosecutors, councils and the communities they serve to have a better understanding of the prevalence of anti-Muslim hate crime and allocate resources accordingly.”
It would also be useful to see who is perpetrating the hate crimes. Reports (e.g., here and here) about the new policy indicate only that police are required to record crimes against Muslims as victims, as they already report statistic for anti-Jewish crimes, but not the identity of the criminals.
As IW previously observed, it would indeed be welcome if the British government were to allocate anti-hate-crime resources commensurate with the proportional scope of the problem.
