Debate contribution: Hate: Executive Approach
Debate contribution by Mr Jon Burrows on .
- MLA
- Mr Jon Burrows
- Party at the time
- Ulster Unionist Party
- Date
- 22 September 2025
- Type
- Debate contribution
- Business
- Opposition Business
- Heading
- Hate: Executive Approach
- Assembly identifier
- Official Report component 5124305
Read the official Assembly record
Text
Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I condemn, unequivocally, hate crime and all forms of crime. It is an evil act, and we should have no hesitation in condemning it; I have done that my whole life. I value the role that lawful migrants play in society. That is an important part of tackling the intolerance that can lead to hate crime. If it was not for those migrants, we would not have enough people working in our hospitals and care homes; we would have fewer doctors; and we would not have enough people processing things in our factories. Those are important things that we need to value. Condemning things is easy, and passing new laws can be relatively easy in the sense that you pass a law, but we need a criminal justice system that deals with hate crime when it happens. At the minute, our criminal justice system is slow and soft. That sends out a signal that people can act and commit hate crime with impunity. As politicians, we have, collectively, starved the PSNI of the resources that it needs. You can have all the laws that you want, but unless someone is enforcing them, what are we going to do? That is why Mr Frew's amendment is so important. We need to have a PSNI that is investigating crime, swiftly and robustly; able to prevent crime and be out on patrol; and able to be in schools, engaging with young people, and tackling the kind of behaviours that lead to hate crime. If we do not invest in our police service and criminal justice system, the new law simply goes unenforced. A good example of that is this: there is already an aggravating factor in Northern Ireland. In any offence that has been committed, the judge can take into account the fact that race or racism was a factor and a motivator, but they do not use that enough. Northern Ireland's system is too soft. We are spending too much time worrying about the perpetrators and not enough about victims. We need to speed up our criminal justice system, and we need to support our police service so that we show, swiftly and with certainty, that crime does not pay. Why would we start to see increases in sentencing with new legislation — I would support new legislation, once I see the detail — if there is already an aggravating factor in our sentencing guidelines that judges are not using? We need to change the culture in our judiciary and entire criminal justice system. Our judges pass very soft sentences — day in, day out. That needs to be gripped. The impact on the victim needs to be put into the heart of everything that we are doing in the criminal justice system. We also need to have hard conversations about prison capacity. Is the fact that we have insufficient prison capacity affecting the sentences that judges pass? I ask that because some of the sentences are inexplicable. If you keep having those soft sentences, you are not going to get outcomes. I studied criminology at master's level — I went into deterrent in crime, which is at the heart of the motion. Deterrence comes from two things, principally: one is the severity of the sentence, and the other is the likelihood that you are going to get caught. If you think that there is very little chance that you are going to get caught but that they might throw the book at you, you might still think, "I'll just do it". However, if you think that you are going to get caught, it changes your behaviour. That is why people stop committing crime and run away as soon as the police bring out an evidence-gathering truck, or why rioting stops as soon as the police publish images.
I do think that that is a chill factor. I am very hawkish on paramilitaries. I have no difficulty in condemning outright every single member of a loyalist paramilitary group, because the fact is that none of them is in a pipe-and-slipper brigade. They are members of a criminal organisation. There is a chill factor, because some of the people involved in this are also paramilitaries. It gives them legitimacy and credence and creates a chill factor when making reports. I go back to this key point: if you believe that you will not get caught, you will carry on committing that kind of crime. We have starved our Police Service of Northern Ireland. Here is a cultural thing, and it goes back to supporting the police, not just with money but with real support. I watched the PSNI become more and more risk-averse before my eyes. It is the most risk-averse police service in the United Kingdom. Let me give you an example. Mugshots go out from every other police service in the United Kingdom. If you are convicted of a race hate crime, your mugshot will go out. If you are convicted of domestic violence, your mugshot will go out. The public see that those actions have consequences and that crime does not pay. There is a very strong message. In Northern Ireland, we are frightened to do that. Why? It is because of the hyper-criticism and accountability that the police have faced, including from people in this very Chamber. We need a police service that is not frightened to be decisive. We are much slower traditionally at releasing unidentified images of suspects, yet that is what stops disorder. There are people who —
— go on about the human rights lobby. We need to support our police, and we need to make sure that our judges do their job, uphold the rule of law and put criminals behind bars.
963 words. Text as published by the Northern Ireland Assembly.
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