The Community Safety Partnership is committed to tackling 'hate' crime, which causes so much distress for many victims, their families and the wider community.  The group who takes this work forward is the Diversity Monitoring Group (DMG), who has a strategic role to promote and improve the reporting, recording, monitoring and analysis of 'hate' crime which is happening in South Lanarkshire.

The group works to increase levels of confidence and reassurance in victims and potential victims of 'hate' crime, and aims to achieve this by:

• Positively encouraging the reporting of 'hate' crime;
• Increasing the detection of offenders in relation to 'hate' crime; and
• Increasing third party reporting pathways and raising awareness of Victim Support and other support groups available to meet individual needs. 

The recorded level of 'hate' crime in South Lanarkshire is low, but partners believe that to a large extent this may be due to under-reporting of such crimes.  The group looks to address this through meaningful engagement with the most vulnerable individuals and groups, to positively encourage them to report incidents, whilst increasing the opportunity for them to report 'hate' crime by increasing the number of third party reporting sites in South Lanarkshire.  Third party reporting allows agencies to directly report incidents to Police Scotland on behalf of their clients, with an enquiry then able to take place, with appropriate support then being provided to meet the victims' individual needs and preferences.

To date 19 third party reporting sites have been established in South Lanarkshire, seven within the Council's Q and As and 12 in libraries and 'Lifestyle' centres.

The group is co-chaired by South Lanarkshire Council's Corporate Resources and Police Scotland, bringing together the relevant partners:

• NHS Lanarkshire;
• Victim Support;
• South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture;
• Social Work Resources, South Lanarkshire Council;
• Education Resources, South Lanarkshire Council;
• HMP Addiewell;
• Procurator Fiscals Office Scotland; and
• Lanarkshire Ethnic Minority Action Group.