Dr. Amanda Haynes:

I thank the Deputy. We conducted the survey with Professor Ross MacMillan through Amárach Research on a nationally representative survey of the general population. We asked a question of the respondents as to how comfortable they would be having somebody with a conviction for vandalising private property as their neighbour. We picked that specific offence to give people something that they could relate to. Some 14% were either comfortable or very comfortable. However, when the same question was asked specifying that the vandalism of private property had included a hate element or as having been a hate crime, only 8% were comfortable. That is approximately half the number of people being comfortable living beside somebody who has been convicted of a hate crime, compared to a non-aggravated version of the same offence. There is an additional penalty associated with the hate offender label on top of the criminal record. Similarly then, we asked people whether they would be comfortable living with somebody convicted of an offence as their neighbour and then whether they would be comfortable living beside somebody who has been convicted of a hate-aggravated version of the same offence. We saw that 33% were uncomfortable having someone who committed an ordinary crime as a neighbour, but this figure increased to 50% being uncomfortable when the person had committed a hate crime.