To ask the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland how many people were convicted of racially-motivated crimes in Northern Ireland in each of the last three years, broken down by (a) police command unit and (b) council district. (211338)

The information requested is not available. Legislation for racial hatred is provided for by way of The Criminal Justice (No.2) (Northern Ireland) Order 2004. Under this Order, penalties for conviction for specified violent offences can be increased by the court if racial hatred, sexual orientation, gender or disability was an aggravating factor. Court conviction datasets do not contain background information in relation to the commission of an offence and it is therefore not possible to separate out convictions for offences with a racial motivation.

Information on the incidence and impact of hate incidents and crimes is collected and is available from PSNI statistics at

http://www.psni.police.uk/3. hate_incidents_and_crimes-4.pdf.