Online disability hate crime – fill in the survey on what action the government should take   

Online disability hate crime  – fill in the survey on what action the government should take   

A cross-party group of MPs believe that social media companies and the Government have failed disabled users and must act urgently.

To ensure the views of disabled people are heard, the Petitions Committee have launched a consultation on their draft recommendations for action through their online survey.

The survey is available at: https://bit.ly/2vNVBGg

Below are the recommendations that Inclusion London chose in the survey:

Section 1: The Government should make sure that the internet is no more dangerous for people with disabilities than it is for people who don’t have disabilities.

Section 2: The Government should make it a crime to stir up hatred against someone because of their disability.

Section 3: The Government must look at how crimes against disabled people are recorded and the effects this has. They must look at how this affects sentencing for hate crimes against disabled people.

Which of our ideas that you chose is most important? Section 2

 

However, we do not think the recommendations should be limited to one from each section, so we also made the following comments:

“There are several good recommendations in each section which we would like the Petitions Committee to put forward to the government, so we think the single choice for each section is too restrictive as the government may have the capacity to do more.  For instance in Section 1 the following options are both important:

• The Government should make sure that the internet is no more dangerous for people with disabilities than it is for people who don’t have disabilities.
• The Government should require social media companies to make sure that their rules and guides (including terms and conditions, community standards and account policies) are accessible to all disabled people.

In section 2 both options below are important:

• The Government should make it a crime to stir up hatred against someone because of their disability.
• The law about online abuse and disability hate crime is not clear for the police or for people with disabilities. The Government says that “what is illegal online is illegal offline”, but that’s not enough. The Government is looking at ways to change the law. They should produce plans for how to do this by 2020.

In Section 3 we think that the options below are connected and it is very important that both are put into action:

• The Government must look at how crimes against disabled people are recorded and the effects this has. They must look at how this affects sentencing for hate crimes against disabled people.
• The Government must make sure that every frontline police officer receives the necessary training to ensure that disabled people have equal access to, and treatment in, the criminal justice system.”

 

More information is available at:  https://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/commons-select/petitions-committee/news-parliament-2017/online-abuse-recommendation-report-published-17-19/