The Crown Prosecution Service (CPS)

The CPS has admitted it needs to "raise its game" in prosecuting cases of disability hate crime.

It has issued new guidelines for the police, which it said would increase the number of prosecutions. In an interview with the BBC, Joanna Perry, of the CPS's equality and diversity unit, said the service could better identify cases in which a crime had been aggravated by hostility towards disabled people.

Her comments were welcomed by Scope, which co-produced a landmark report on the issue in 2008 that found that just 141 disability-related incidents were prosecuted in 2007-8 compared with 778 homophobic incidents and 6,689 racial incidents.

WDP are a Disability Hate Crime Reporting Centre and will be working to develop this work when we move back to Beaufort Street.

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