[4] Disability hate crimes may take the form of one-off incidents, or may represent systematic abuse which continues over periods of weeks, months, or even years.
[5] Denial of access thus demonstrates a prejudice against equal rights for disabled people; such actions risk actual bodily harm as well as limiting personal freedom.
The people who commit disability hate crimes frequently justify their actions with narratives which are driven by socio-economic factors which can follow a typical pattern.
For example, people commit these crimes because they view disabled people as: making 'inconvenient' or 'insolent' demands for physical barriers (e.g. parked cars, commercial signage) to be removed; 'falsely' portraying their disabilities to receive welfare support ("scroungers"); being undeserving of equal access / treatment; having lower status and therefore being "easy targets" for aggressive acts.
People can fail to acknowledge the fact that seeing a risky action once is no indicator of whether the disabled person can do it safely, repeatedly, without extreme pain, without consequence[6] or predictably at any other time.
Low awareness of the medical need for ambulatory wheelchair use - such as fatigue collapse over medium distance; difficulties with prolonged standing as opposed to walking; balance or cardiac issues - can also be a factor.
The two key requirements for an act to be called a "disability hate crime" are the perception that in part or in whole, it is motivated by ableism, a prejudice against someone because he or she has a disability (denial of equal rights is a form of this prejudice); and second, the perception that the act is actually a crime,[8] which includes repeated access blocking.
Sir Ken Macdonald, QC, the then Director of Public Prosecutions for England and Wales, stated in a speech to the Bar Council in October 2008 that "I am on record as saying that it is my sense that disability hate crime is very widespread.
[11] This sparked the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) to begin keeping data that relates to all crimes based against persons, property, or society that entails someone with a disability.
The FBI did this in order to determine if the frequency of the crimes differed depending on one's disabled status (whether it was physical or mental).
From the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting Program, there were far fewer similar offenses in the year prior, demonstrating a stark increase as time has progressed.
The Equality Act 2010, although allowing those to speak out when discriminated against, created a vulnerable category of people that consisted mainly of those with disabilities.
This under-reporting is both pre-emptive, through a widespread belief within the disabled community that they will not be treated seriously by law enforcement, and post-facto, where police forces investigate the crime as non hate-based and record it as such.
In southeast England, many with intellectual disabilities recall places such as schools, day centers, distant neighborhoods, and even forms of public transportation as areas "where bad things happen".
[5] It has been proven on multiple occasions that disability hate crimes are underreported due to police enforcement consistently making their own assumptions of the situation at hand and abusers perceiving impairments as vulnerability.
The Crown Prosecution Service has issued guidance to its prosecutors reminding them that 'vulnerable' should only be used as a description of a person within the precise legal meaning of the term - for instance, as defined in section 16 of the Youth Justice and Criminal Evidence Act 1999.
[24] Research conducted in the US has indicated that the elevated damage includes anxiety, loss of confidence, depression, long-term post-traumatic stress disorder, and fear.
[34] OPM's research report on violence and hostility against disabled people found that hate crimes have impacts that extend past the physical and emotional harm experienced by the victims.