Disability related hate crime have become a very common evil in today’s world. This means subjecting a disabled person to hostile behaviour and is very frequently seen in public. The humiliation which a disabled person goes through because of such instances affects their mental being drastically. This also affects their personality and makes them feel socially vulnerable.

Such acts committed by people are in fact crimes[1] if they satisfy two conditions, them being; one, they are done against a person who suffers from some disability and the second being, it has a degree of hatred attached to it that makes it fit enough to be called a crime. Such crime can constitute anything verbal or physical which is extremely hateful including degrading comments, gestures of intimidation, assault, vandalism or even murder. After these crimes being widespread in large number of areas, Sir Ken Macdonald, the earlier Director of Public Prosecutions of England and Wales also said that:

“This is a scar on the conscience of criminal justice. And all bodies and all institutions involved in the delivery of justice, including my own, share the responsibility.”

Such crimes have a very big disadvantage attached to them. One of the biggest demerits is lack of actions against them due to lack of awareness regarding them. The legislations are meager to keep track of such situations and some countries are ignorant enough to not even consider such crimes as recognized problems. Most of the legislatures around the world have not taken into -consideration as to how grave of an offence is hate-crime in relation to disabled people. Even if hate crimes have been taken into account, they are usually in matters of religion, caste, race, LGBTs or other more popular problems in the society. The thought of hate crimes against the disabled remains a distant thought to many.

Present Situation

Till now, only countries like the UK have identified and strict laws regarding such crimes committed by people. Under Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act, 2003, the following has been stated:

“(a) that, at the time of committing the offence, or immediately before or after doing so, the offender demonstrated towards the victim of the offence hostility based on—

(i) the sexual orientation (or presumed sexual orientation) of the victim, or

(ii) a disability (or presumed disability) of the victim, or

(b) that the offence is motivated (wholly or partly)—

(i) by hostility towards persons who are of a particular sexual orientation, or

(ii) by hostility towards persons who have a disability or a particular disability.”[2]

With only very few laws in relation to hate crimes against the disabled, it is a challenging task to fight this problem. There have been many recorded instances of complaints being filed by the families of disabled people about the blank discrimination and insult that has been thrown at them because they are not considered “normal” in the public eye.

People suffering from Autism have been reported to go through a very major chunk of discrimination and hateful gestures by people around them. Even after being so widely spread, the recognition given to crimes against autistic people has been minimal as compared to other popular forms of hate crimes.[3]

There have been saddening examples of molestation and sexual abuse of disabled women and men as well. Women have been subjected to cruelty and been taken advantage of due to their lack of protecting themselves too many times. Even the men have been a victim of this inhuman offence, especially in their teenage or pre-teens in schools and other public institutions or at home. Along with this, bullying has been an alarming problem which leaves deep impact on a person’s mental stability and growth by ruining their confidence and capability. This is major form of hate crime too.[4]

Conclusion

However, with the public identifying the hate crimes committed towards the disabled community, they have started perceiving this group as very vulnerable and child-like, which is not the object of anticipated legislation regarding this issue at all. The motive behind the awareness is to stop hatred from being spread, so that the disabled people feel confident and not aloof while facing the public. The aim is not at all to portray them as an object of sympathy or vulnerability at all. With more awareness being spread about such issues, it is very essential that people become more sensitive to them, which does not mean being apologetic or treating them like children as well. Due to such problems being faced, the UK came up with a rule that word “vulnerable” should be restricted to the legal scenario, without mingling it with the social scene.[5]

[1] Mark Sherry (2010) “Disability Hate Crimes: Does Anyone Really Hate Disabled People?” Ashgate, London.

[2] Section 146, Criminal Justice Act, 2003 (UK).

[3] Chaplin, E. and Mukhopadhyay, S. (2018), “Autism spectrum disorder and hate crime”, Advances in Autism, Vol. 4 No. 1, pp. 30-36.

[4] Quarmby, Katharine. “Scapegoat: Why we are failing disabled people“. Portobello, 2011.

[5] Section 16 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999 (UK).

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