Hertfordshire reports 95 antisemitic crimes, but few offenders identified
There has been a "dramatic increase in reporting of crimes against the Jewish community"
Hertfordshire has seen 95 reported crimes against its Jewish community over the past 12 months, with just seven investigations resulting in an offender being identified.
Chief Constable of Herts Constabulary, Andy Prophet, sat down with the force’s Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC), Jonathan Ash-Edwards, to discuss local policing issues in their accountability and performance meeting.
The PCC asked the chief constable about antisemitic incidents in the county, following an earlier discussion about tensions arising from the current war in the Middle East.
The chief constable said 95 crimes linked to antisemitism had been reported in 2025/26, up from 83 in 2024/25, and described incidents such as verbal abuse in the street, some of which were “particularly unpleasant”.
He said: “In the last 12 months, we’ve had 95 crimes reported. Some of those may be targeting people because they’re Jewish, some of those may be just crimes that happen to people who happen to be Jewish.
“I don’t belittle any one of those, but we are seeing a dramatic increase in reporting of crimes against the Jewish community.
“Of those crimes – the 95 that I talked about in the last 12 months – seven have already been solved with someone being held to account, 24 continue to be actively investigated with lines of inquiry, and 64 have been investigated with no suspect identified but safeguarding prevention advice given to the victims.
“So we aren’t seeing huge spikes, and that’s been a relatively stable trend over a number of years in Hertfordshire. We’re not complacent. I recognise the risk of under-reporting, and we work really hard with our Jewish communities and all communities.”
The chief constable said seven specifically antisemitic crimes had recently been reported and he offered some insight in the nature of the offences.
He said: “They are things like harassment of individuals being targeted because of who they are, verbal and repeated verbal abuse towards individuals in the public space, be they property owners or members of the community and kind of one-off engagements of a particularly unpleasant nature.
“So, all of those things are being taken incredibly seriously, as are the other matters.
“These things happen, horrible things happen in Hertfordshire, as they do in the rest of the world. But we are not seeing significant increases in reporting, and we have a really sharp eye on trying to make sure that remains the case.”