Trans people in England and Wales ‘twice as likely to be victims of crime’
The Office for National Statistics has published data on the gender identity of victims for the first time.
Transgender people in England and Wales are twice as likely to be victims of crime as cisgender people, says a new report.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) reveal that more than one in four trans people (28%) have experienced crime in the year ending March 2020.
In comparison, 14 per cent of people whose gender identity is the same as the sex they were registered at birth had been targeted.
According to The Guardian, it is the first time ONS has published data on the gender identity of victims in its annual survey.
Stats also show that a person’s sexuality makes them vulnerable: those who identified as gay, lesbian or bisexual were 21 per cent more likely to have experienced a crime than heterosexual people (14%).
Elsewhere, the report broke down how much of a role race and ethnicity plays – 20 per cent of victims were of mixed or multiple ethnic backgrounds, 15 per cent were Asian, while 13 per cent were white.
The types of crime were not listed, but the ONS said they didn’t include fraud and computer use as these offences are unlikely to be tailored towards certain demographics.
Overall, crime rates dropped by nine per cent in the last year.
Last month, a survey carried out by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights showed an increase in LGBTQ harassment.
Compared to a similar report from 2012, the number of LGBT people in the UK who say that have been harassed in the past five years rose from 55% to 62%.
Additionally, those who said they had been violently attacked at least once had gone up by nine points – seven above the European average.