In brief: The chair of Jersey’s Violence Against Women and Girls Taskforce has called it “troubling” that sex remains an open question in proposed hate-crime legislation, while Home Affairs Minister Helen Miles says the 12-week consultation will help shape the law without necessarily creating significant new costs. The consultation closes on 12 January 2027.
Sex on the sidelines
Jersey is consulting on hate-crime legislation that would introduce tougher sentences for crimes motivated by hostility towards protected characteristics, as well as new offences of stirring up hatred. Race, religion, sexual orientation, disability and gender reassignment are all proposed for inclusion. Sex, however, remains an open question, and that omission has not gone unnoticed.
Kate Wright, chair of the Violence Against Women and Girls Taskforce, told the Jersey Evening Post she welcomes the consultation but finds it “troubling that sex remains an open question when other characteristics are proposed for inclusion.” Her argument is straightforward: “Hatred directed at women because they are women deserves explicit recognition. Misogyny can intimidate women, silence their voices and restrict their freedom to participate in everyday life.”
It is a fair point. If the legislature is prepared to name every other major characteristic, leaving sex in the “maybe” column sends a curious signal about whose safety is considered self-evident and whose still requires a debate.
A law that must not create a hierarchy of harm
Ms Wright is not simply demanding that sex be bolted on without thought. She raises a more nuanced concern: that in domestic-abuse and sexual-violence cases, perpetrators often act from power, control and entitlement rather than from hatred expressed in explicit terms. Requiring proof of hostility in such cases could, she warns, create a perverse hierarchy in which “abuse accompanied by a misogynistic slur is regarded as more serious than equally harmful abuse without one.”
She draws a careful distinction between three separate legal tools: recognising hostility as an aggravating factor when sentencing an existing crime; criminalising attempts to stir up hatred against women; and protecting women from public sexual harassment. These, she says, cannot simply substitute for one another and each requires its own consideration.
On that last point, Ms Wright raises a specific question about a gap left by earlier work. She asks what happened to the proposed protection against public sexual harassment that featured in the VAWG Taskforce’s report, which was deferred into this wider legislative process. “We need assurance that the new law will close that gap, including where hatred cannot be proved,” she said. It is precisely the kind of practical, unglamorous detail that can disappear into the machinery of consultation and never quite re-emerge.
The minister’s position
Home Affairs Minister Helen Miles, a Senator, told the JEP that progressing hate-crime legislation early in the new political term is one of her priorities. She noted that Jersey had already consulted on related provisions in 2019, when a prejudice element was dropped from public order legislation, making this a second attempt to get the framework right.
Senator Miles was keen to manage expectations on cost, saying the consultation is designed to determine what the legislation will actually look like and that it may not require a separate hate-crime law at all. “It might be that we just need to have a set of offences that we can put into other legislation to tackle this sort of offending,” she said, adding that this “doesn’t mean that there’s going to be a great cost to implementing this law.”
That reassurance comes against a backdrop of existing strain: the JEP notes that laws protecting women and girls have already prompted warnings about rising caseloads and an overstretched forensic laboratory. The minister also sought to address concerns about free expression, stating clearly that the law “isn’t going to criminalise people’s beliefs or certain perspectives on things” but will tackle occasions when those tip over into criminal behaviour. That is a balance many jurisdictions have found easier to promise than to deliver, but it is the right principle to start from.
The consultation is open to all sectors of society and closes on 12 January 2027, before any law is drafted.
Source: Jersey Evening Post
