Prejudice Motivated Crime – Religions for Peace Australia

Victoria Police has launched new resources to help diverse Victorians understand how to report prejudice motivated crime. Prejudice motivated crime is any crime motivated by prejudice or hatred towards a person or a group because of a characteristic such as race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.

Victoria Police has launched new resources to help diverse Victorians understand how to report Prejudice Motivated Crime.

Prejudice Motivated Crime is any crime motivated by prejudice or hatred towards a person or a group because of a characteristic such as race, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. These crimes can include harassment, threats to kill, verbal abuse, destroying or damaging property, and in more serious cases, physical violence. These crimes not only impact the victim’s sense of safety, but also the broader community.

The new resources, available for download from the Victoria Police website, are an animated video and poster. The resources are available in English, Arabic, Chinese (Traditional and Simplified), Hindi, Korean, Persian, Punjabi, Somali, Urdu and Vietnamese.

Transcript:
Some crimes in our community are motivated by prejudice.

These incidents of violence and hate are not okay.

Targeting you based on how you look, your background, your sexuality, your age, your disability, should never happen, but we know it does, and it will not be tolerated.

Victoria Police takes your safety very seriously and we will investigate.

We know these crimes and incidents have increased but do not always get reported to police.

If you or someone you know have been the victim of a crime, please report it.

If the crime is motivated by prejudice or hate, please tell us.

Because if we don’t know, we can’t do anything about it.

We also want people to feel safe and supported when reporting a crime like this.

We call them prejudice motivated crimes or incidents.

There are many ways you can report a prejudice motivated crime or incident.

You can come into the police station, contact Victoria Police by phone or online, or report it to the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission.

If you have information that can help solve a prejudice motivated crime, you can share this anonymously with Crime Stoppers.

Speak out.

Together we can make Victoria safer for everyone.

Prejudice or hatred increases the severity of crime. It is an aggravating factor and can occur as part of any crime. It makes crimes more serious because they impact the broader community as well as the specific victim.

Victoria Police takes prejudice motivated crime very seriously.

This video is available in the following languages: