Book review: Scapegoat: Why we are failing disabled people by Katharine Quarmby

WHEN is a crime invisible? According to the campaigning journalist Katharine Quarmby, it's not just when those who have been targeted choose, for whatever reason, not to report it. It's also when those reports which are made are not recognised as being "part of a bigger picture, with similar motivations, similar patterns of attack and similar types of perpetrator"– when they're effectively lost in the official data.

Quarmby is herself recognised as the first British journalist to write about disability hate crime, back in 2007. Having also compiled the first significant report into the subject, commissioned by the charity Scope, she brings to this book a detailed knowledge of numerous horrifying cases of neglect and brutality towards disabled people, based both on her own research and face-to-face interviews with relatives, officials, academics and campaigners. Although her personal visits to the murder locations might seem somewhat frivolous, her book remains genuinely authoritative.

To show how disability hate crime is "a very modern version of an ancient crime", Quarmby initially argues that our history "has bequeathed to us a legacy rich in contempt, fear and hatred" of disabled people; from the cult of the body beautiful seen in ancient Greek and Roman culture, through the demonisation of disabled people by medieval Christians to the post-Darwinian eugenics movement which was amazingly popular in the West, at least until its full dehumanising truth was discovered within the Nazi concentration camps.

Yet if our criminal justice system has only recently begun to recognise the existence of disability hate crime, Quarmby argues that disability campaigners haven't been much better. Thanks to their focus on accessibility issues, independent living and legal equality during the last 30 to 40 years, even organisations set up to monitor disabled people's rights were slow to pick up the "background noise" of daily intimidation, fear and violence experienced by many disabled people.

Obvious improvements can be made to social care services, education and the criminal justice system, but Quarmby's sobering conclusion is that – just as with racial hate crime after the murder of Stephen Lawrence – there needs to be a paradigm shift in the way that disabled people are viewed by society as a whole.

This article was originally published in Scotland on Sunday on June 5th 2011