BRIGHTON, August 18  –  Brighton and Hove City Councillor Simon Williams has written to the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) asking why there were so few prosecutions for gay hate crime across Sussex last year relative to the number of reported homophobic crimes.

Recent figures released by the CPS reveal that only 12 people were prosecuted for gay hate crimes in the whole of Sussex, which includes Brighton and Hove, from April 2004 to March 2005.  Of these, six defendants pleaded guilty and, of the six that went to trial, only two resulted in convictions while the other four were ‘discontinued’.

Cases are often discontinued because the victim withdraws their evidence or does not attend Court.

“There are many factors that determine whether a case is prosecuted including the strength of evidence and public interest, but I’m concerned at how few cases of homophobic and transphobic crime are actually prosecuted relative to the far higher number of reported crimes,” said Cllr. Williams, community safety spokesperson for the Green Party on the City Council

“The number of reported gay hate crimes for Sussex is usually in the hundreds every year.

“Of course, many gay hate crimes involve low-level street disorder and it’s often difficult to identify the offender so preventing a prosecution.  However, even taking this into account, only 12 prosecutions across the whole of Sussex seems very low.

“I’m also concerned at the number of prosecutions that were discontinued.  In Sussex this was a third of the total.  The CPS admits that around a quarter of gay hate cases are discontinued because the victim withdraws the evidence,” he continued.

“It’s clear that some lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender (LGBT) people who suffer hate crime find the Court process stressful or hostile so they decide to drop their case before or when it gets to Court.

“We need a debate about what’s happening and we need to know more about LGBT people’s experience of the Court system.  Sussex Police have developed effective reporting systems for victims of hate crime but the Court experience may be taking its toll,” he said.

Last year, a total of 114 crimes with a homophobic or transphobic element were repoted in the Brighton and Hove alone, police statistics show.  The figure does not include the rest of Sussex.