Blick_UK Politics (9780198825555)_CH10

232 Chapter 10  Identity, equality, and power

Calls for greater political priority to be attached to tackling sexual harassment, to ensure actors beyond government, including regulators and business, take action.

It is time for the Government to put sexual harassment at the top of the agenda. Currently, there is little incentive for employers and regulators to take robust action to tackle and prevent unwanted sexual behaviours in the workplace. In contrast, there is considerable focus on protecting people’s personal data and preventingmoney laundering, with stringent requirements on employers and businesses to meet their responsibili- ties in these areas. They should now put the same emphasis on tackling sexual harassment.

vated hate crimes occurring around the time of the EU ref- erendum of mid-2016 and the terrorist attacks of mid-2017 (Allen and Zayed, 2019a). Hate crime undermines a key principle of democracy: that everyone should have equal standing and securi- ty within society. It also has direct consequences for the political processes that are part of the democratic system. Women running for office at local government level are more likely to fear abuse, violence, or harassment than men in the same position (Committee on Standards in Pub- lic Life, 2017: 61). Referring to this tendency, a report by the Committee on Standards in Public Life, an official body reporting to the Prime Minister, noted that forms of speech that did not amount to hate crime could nonetheless also have an intimidatory effect, for instance by stressing the personal characteristics of people when depicting them in a negative light (Committee on Standards in Public Life, 2017: 73). This might discourage some groups in society from running for office and therefore continue to propa- gate inequalities in the system. Alongside being potential victims of hate crime, some ethnic minority groups are also more likely than the norm to be the subject of measures designed to prevent, detect, and punish crime. Disparities exist with respect to ethnic- ity in the operation of the Criminal Justice System (CJS), though it is not possible to establish with certainty how far they arise from discriminatory practices. An official review of data for 2018 finds: In general, minority ethnic groups appear to be over- represented at many stages throughout the CJS compared with the White ethnic group. The greatest disparity appears at the point of stop and search, arrests, custodial sentencing and prison population. Among mi- nority ethnic groups, Black individuals were often the most over-represented. (Ministry of Justice, 2019b: 2) Evidence appeared of disproportionate use of law en- forcement powers against BAME people during the coro- navirus emergency. For instance, analysis carried out by Liberty Investigates, a research project connected to the Liberty civil liberties pressure group, showed that BAME people were 54 per cent more likely to be issued

A 2019 report by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) , taking a lead from issues raised by #MeToo, identified se- rious problems for LGBT employees. A TUC survey found that almost 70 per cent of LGBT people had experienced sexual harassment of some kind in the workplace, but that most of them did not want to report it (Trades Union Con- gress, 2019: 11). Results of a large-scale government survey of the life experiences of LGBT people appeared in 2019. These re- sults revealed that, although there were general positive responses about the rights provided to LGBT people in the UK, a number of problems existed. Findings included that 40 per cent or more of respondents had been subject to unwanted behaviour because of their LGBT status. Two per cent had undergone treatments presented as ‘cures’ for their sexual orientation. Nearly a quarter had used men- tal health services in the past year. Overall, LGBT people had a lower level of satisfaction with their lives than the average in the UK (6.5 out of 10 as compared with 7.7 out of 10) (Government Equalities Office, 2019). Hate crime Another area in which a variety of supposedly protected groups remain vulnerable is that of hate crime . Hate crime is any criminal act targeted at people because—in the view of the victim or anyone else—of their individual char- acteristics. These characteristics can include: disability ; gender; age; being transgender (see In Practice 10.1); sexu- al orientation; ethnicity or race; and belief or religion. It may involve public order offences such as threats and harass- ment; violence; stalking; or criminal damage. Precise data and trends are difficult to establish, but the most common motive for hate crime is race. Out of all the different ethnic- ities, it is Asian people, or those with an Asian background, who are subject to the largest proportion of hate crimes. Another common motive is religion, and hate crime, such as abuse or violence, is an aspect of both antisemitism and Islamophobia, as discussed above. There is evidence that hate crime tends to increase following some political events and following incidents such as terrorist attacks; data show sudden surges in racially and religiously moti-

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