West Yorkshire Police – Hate Crime Awareness Course (HCAC)
The Hate Crime Awareness Course is available as a condition for:
- Conditional Cautions
For Summary only offences please not Sergeant or Hate Crime Coordinators authority is required. For either-way offences please note Inspectors authority is required. (ie Section 47 Assault) Please refer to DPP guidance for more information.
What does the programme involve?
The Hate Crime Awareness Course (HCAC) is delivered by the course facilitator and a co facilitator to the offender, to ensure that they are given the opportunity to speak about the incident. The course can be delivered in person or online. The course is approximately two hours in length and split into three parts. Both courses are based around a PowerPoint presentation (with videos) which promotes discussion.
Prior to the course delivery, contact will be made with the victim. The victim must not have opted out of Restorative Justice. This ensures that the Restorative Justice Service can contact the victim to find out how they have been affected by the offence, to take their thoughts and any questions to the offender as part of the course. In addition, all victims will be offered the opportunity to engage in the Restorative Justice process.
The first part covers information about the offence (e.g. the law being broken, statistics for West Yorkshire and discussion around whether the offender understands why they have been given the condition to attend the course). The offender is shown a video which looks at the impact of similar offences on others. This provides an opportunity for the offender to consider how their offence could impact their victim.
The second part looks at the offence and the offender is given the opportunity to talk about what happened, the impact of the offence on those involved/connected, triggers and behaviours and how things could have been done differently.
Finally, we look at restorative justice – what this involves, the benefits of it and whether the offender is willing to engage.
To book, please follow the link to the booking page