4 | The need for better prevalence data Experiences differ between people of different religious identities: ‘The aggregated data for the last six national surveys (2013–2018) [shows that] reported experience of discrimination ranges from 13 per cent Anglican and 14 per cent Catholic, to 22 per cent Buddhist, 36 per cent Hindu and 39 per cent Muslim.’29 These reported experiences of discrimination are not broken down according to their level of severity, but may include incidents of serious harm. Another valuable report on the experiences of the Australian Jewish community is the Gen17 Australian Jewish Community Study undertaken by the Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation at Monash University, and JCA, a peak body of Jewish organisations in NSW and ACT. They received 8,621 responses, making it one of the largest samples ever collected in a national Jewish community study anywhere in the world. For our purposes it is worth noting the data on antisemitism in this report: • 43% of respondents considered antisemitism to be ‘a very big problem’ or ‘a fairly big problem’. • 64% of respondents said that they had experienced antisemitic comments online. 73% of those aged 18–39 had experienced antisemitic comments online. • 15% of male respondents, and 8% of female respondents reported having experienced verbal insults and harassment in the last twelve months. These results vary by age and religious identification: for example, 31% of Strictly Orthodox 18–39-year-old people had personally experienced verbal insults and harassment. • 2% of respondents had witnessed a physical attack, and 0.5% had experienced a physical attack.30 18 Professor Gail Mason of the University of Sydney has investigated the prevalence of bias crime in her article, ‘A Picture of Bias Crime in New South Wales’. Bias crime is crime that is motivated by prejudice, bias or hatred towards a presumed characteristic of the victim, such as race, religion, sexual orientation, disability status or gender identity. Mason presents the results of the first study of bias crime data held by the New South Wales Police Force and compares the NSW and Victorian data to offer the most comprehensive picture of reports of bias crime in Australia. Between July 2007 and January 2017, a total of 2,467 reports were determined by the NSW Police Force’s Bias Crimes Unit (BCU) to fit the criteria of a bias crime, suspected bias crime or bias incident—an average of 34 reports per month. Mason examines the period 2013–2016, and finds that of the 1,050 cases recorded as a bias crime, suspected bias crime or bias incident in this period: • 44% were categorised by the BCU as motivated by religious bias • 37% by racial/ethnic bias • 14% by bias towards the victim’s sexual orientation/gender identity. Mason notes ‘the results of this study suggest that bias crime is under-reported and under-recorded’. This is often due to mistrust of police. She suggests that ‘the creation of sustainable police-community partnerships is key to building community confidence to report and police capacity to record bias crime’.31