Women and girls will have greater protection against hate crimes under legislation laid in the Scottish Parliament by Ministers today (28th January). The regulations, if agreed by MSPs, will designate ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021.
Women and girls will have greater protection against hate crimes under legislation laid in the Scottish Parliament by Ministers today.
The regulations, if agreed by MSPs, will designate ‘sex’ as a protected characteristic under the Hate Crime and Public Order (Scotland) Act 2021. There are protections in the Act for individuals’ rights in respect to freedom of expression for the new stirring up hatred offences. Hate crime is behaviour that is both criminal and rooted in prejudice and can be verbal, physical, online or face-to-face.
This will make it a specific criminal offence to stir up hatred against women and girls, as well as men and boys, because of their sex. The regulations will also allow courts to treat crimes motivated by hatred of someone’s sex as aggravated offences, which are considered more serious – including when passing sentence following conviction.
A consultation was held on the draft regulations, with 309 out of 365 responses supporting adding the characteristic of sex to both the stirring up of hatred offence and the aggravation. The final regulations now laid for MSPs’ scrutiny are largely unchanged from the draft.
The change will mean that women and girls have the same legal safeguards available under the Act to groups targeted by hate crime because of their age, disability, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and variations in sex characteristics.