A hate crime is any type of crime committed with a motivation of bias against a member of a specific group because of their involvement (actual or perceived) in that group. This prejudice can be based on race, ethnicity, gender, religion, ability, sexual orientation or membership of an alternative sub-culture . Essentially, a hate crime is targeting people because of who they are or who they are perceived to be. When this occurs in rural, remote or regional locations, the drivers, experiences and consequences can be unique compared to urban contexts
Why has so much hate crime policy seemingly ignored academic research? And why has so much research been conducted without reference to policy?
This book bridges the gap between research and policy by bringing together internationally renowned hate crime experts from the domains of scholarship, policy and activism. It provides new perspectives on the nature of hate crime victimisation and perpetration, and considers an extensive range of themes, challenges and solutions which have previously been un- or under-explored. In doing so, the book offers innovative ways of combating and preventing hate crime that combine cutting-edge research with the latest in professional innovations.
Essential reading for students, academics and practitioners working across a range of disciplines including criminology, sociology and social policy, Responding to Hate Crime makes a clear and compelling case for closer and more constructive partnerships between scholars and policy makers.
The impression often conveyed by the media about hate crime offenders is that they are hate-fuelled individuals who, in acting out their extremely bigoted views, target their victims in premeditated violent attacks. Scholarly research on the perpetrators of hate crime has begun to provide a more nuanced picture. But the preoccupation of researchers with convicted offenders neglects the vast majority of hate crime offenders that do not come into contact with the criminal justice system.
This book, from a leading author in the field, widens understanding of hate crime by demonstrating that many offenders are ordinary people who offend in the context of their everyday lives. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book takes a victim-centred approach to explore and analyse hate crime as a social problem, providing an empirically informed and scholarly perspective. Aimed at academics and students of criminology, sociology and socio-legal studies, the book draws out the connections between the individual agency of offenders and the background structural context for their actions. It adds a new dimension to the debate about criminalising hate in light of concerns about the rise of punitive and expressive justice, scrutinizing the balance struck by hate crime laws between the rights of offenders and the rights of victims.
114 six conclusions: understanding everyday ‘hate crime’ Scholarly writing on social problems spans a continuum from highly abstracted works to careful descriptions of empirical phenomena. The aim of this book has been to sit somewhere in between and apply empirically grounded analysis to further the conceptual understanding of ‘hate crime’. It is often the case, however, that more questions than answers are raised when an analysis digs deeper into a social problem. This concluding chapter draws out the key themes of the analysis that has unfolded across
71 FIVE Evidencing the case for ‘hate crime’ Joanna Perry28 ‘Hate crime is a nomadic concept...’ (Mason, 2005: 586) Introduction While international instruments and commitments to tackle racist violence are longstanding and comprehensive, ‘hate crime’ is a relatively new concept in the international criminal justice policy arena. It is quickly gaining ground, appearing in Ministerial Council Decisions of the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) and research reports published by the European Union’s Fundamental Rights Agencies (FRA
44 three the spatial dynamics of everyday ‘hate crime’ A key argument of the last chapter was that many incidents of ‘hate crime’ are not encounters engineered by offenders, but result from the normal frictions of day-to-day life. Or they take place when offenders seize an opportunity in chance encounters that occur in the course of the victims’ and offenders’ everyday lives. This chapter develops the analysis by demonstrating that the geography of space and place clearly plays a role in generating encounters between offenders and victims. It therefore
43 TWO Creating ideal victims in hate crime policy Hannah Mason-Bish Introduction In July 2013, Bijan Ebrahimi was brutally murdered in Bristol, UK. The 44-year-old mentally disabled man, who had come to Britain as a refugee from Iran, had sought help from the police on a number of occasions because of the escalating harassment that he was receiving from neighbours. Members of the local community had accused him of being a paedophile after finding him taking photographs of young people who he had thought were vandalising his hanging baskets. He was
Key points This chapter traces the journey from hate crime to Disability Hate Crime through an analysis of the relevant literature including policy related documents that construct and reference Disability Hate Crime. It considers the origins and evolving conceptions of both hate crime and Disability Hate Crime, the construction of disability in public policy and the construction of disability within hate crime policy. It is only recently that disability hostility has begun to be recognized as Disability Hate Crime, and it is a contested, contentious and
23 two the normality of everyday ‘hate crime’ A recent report for the US-based international human rights organisation, Human Rights First, argued that the most pervasive and most threatening form of racist violence in Europe and North America ‘is also perhaps the most banal and unorganized: the low-level violence of the broken window, the excrement through the letter box, late night banging on doors, and the pushes, kicks and blows delivered to the passerby on the sidewalk’ (McClintock, 2005, p 5). While issue might be taken with the notion that any such
1 1 HATE CRIME BASICS Hate crime casework and support involves providing emotional support, practical assistance and advice to people and groups who have reported, accessed or been referred to a support service or professional (eg a hate crime practitioner, police officer, housing officer, social worker or teacher). Guidance on providing effective casework support to hate crime victims is limited and this guide offers information, advice and frameworks for a busy practitioner to develop their working practices with clients. The first two chapters of the
