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Empowering Communities: Proactive Strategies to Combat Hate Crime Victimization
Abstract
Hate crimes are reprehensible acts driven by animosity and bias against specific target groups, transcending borders and geographical boundaries. Effectively addressing hate crimes necessitates a profound understanding of the victims impacted by prejudice and hostility. To combat crimes rooted in prejudice, it is crucial to delve into the experiences of the victims. A comprehensive understanding of their needs, characteristics, and perspectives becomes paramount for conducting thorough investigations, countering criminal activities, and preventing further victimization. Within this framework, this chapter encompasses the identification of victim groups affected by hate crimes and a detailed exploration of the requisite measures to eradicate victimization. This multifaceted approach aims not only to address the immediate consequences of hate crimes but also to implement proactive strategies that contribute to the prevention of recurrent victimization.
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The term hate crime is instinctively understood across policy and practice domains, but is defined differently across contexts. Whilst it is accepted that a standard universal and internationally accepted definition of a hate crime is not possible or desirable, I will seek to create common definitional boundaries for the term hate crime, which allows for jurisdictional flexibility whilst retaining a common core of understanding. In doing so, I will set out the parameters of the concept, and then articulate the reasons for excluding particular manifestations of targeted hostility from its remit. I will finally describe the core constituent elements of a hate crime, and move towards a proposal for definitional boundaries for the term hate crime that applicable across scholarly and policy domains.
The theme of the Third International Conference on Hate Studies, The Pursuit of Justice: Understanding Hatred, Confronting Intolerance, Eliminating Inequality, took me immediately to the subject matter of this article: Who is meant to be served by the subthemes of this conference, if not the targets or potential targets of hate crime? An equally important set of questions would ask: What justice looks like from the perspectives of those individuals and groups? What do hate crime victims want, and what do they need? And, what do vulnerable communities want and need?
In much the same way that expressions of hate pose problems that cut across disciplines, across communities, and across borders, so too must responses be informed through international, intersectional, and interdisciplinary perspectives that serve to widen our understanding. Hate crime remains a contested and highly complex area of study and policy, and the deeper we delve to find solutions and answers, the more likely we are to stumble across further problems and questions. Identifying how best to resolve them is a difficult, ongoing task, but one that should form the basis of any progressive dialogue among hate crime scholars, policy makers, and practitioners. The nature of these problems and questionsand more importantly, the ways in which we can use them to shape contemporary hate crime discourseis what this article seeks to explore.
Male and female young adults provided responses to open-ended questions about hate crimes. Results indicated considerable variability in their definitions, with perceptions of hate crimes differing with regard to demographic characteristics of both victims and perceivers. Victims may experience hate crimes differently because of who they are, why they are victimized, and with whom they share their experiences. In a separate study, males and females each evaluated a scenario of a hate crime perpetrated upon a male or female victim. Whether the crime was described as motivated by racial or religious bigotry, heterosexism, or was ambiguous was systematically varied. The demographic status of the participant appeared to determine how disruptive they regarded the crime scenario, and the likelihood that they would report personal knowledge of a victim of a similar type of assault. None of the participants was likely to report knowledge of a victim of a heterosexist assault. Policy implications of results from both studies are discussed.
This article presents findings from a qualitative study of criminal cases labelled hate crime in Norway. The author asks what kind of knowledge is being produced through the criminal cases and what does it say about policing? The study captures how the cases become registered in the system. This results in the creation of three main categories of events, namely what the author calls post hoc victim reported incident, post hoc police reported incident and in situ incident. The author finds that the practice-oriented document analysis enables an understanding of how some acts are criminalized and turned into ‘hate crimes.’ In addition, the few cases that are exercised in court, have an impact on policing hate crime, as actors and materiality come together in producing a sense of justice, urgency and need of police attention on future, similar events.
Hate crimes, often referred to as bias-motivated crimes, have garnered greater public attention and concern as political rhetoric in the United States and internationally has promoted the exclusion of people based on their group identity. This review examines what we know about the trends in hate crime behavior and the legal responses to this problem across four main domains. First, we describe the legal framework and recent attempts to expand hate crime protections beyond historically disenfranchised groups. Second, we examine recent trends and patterns of hate crime victimization. Third, we review what is known about those who perpetrate hate crimes and those who experience hate crime victimization. Finally, we examine the efficacy of efforts to respond to and prevent hate crime. This review examines a wide range of bias-motivated harms and suggests how future research and policy can be more inclusive of victimization extending beyond traditionally understood hate crimes.
Expected final online publication date for the Annual Review of Criminology, Volume 6 is January 2023. Please see http://www.annualreviews.org/page/journal/pubdates for revised estimates.
A Comparative Perspective on the Protection of Hate Crime Victims in the European Union
Hate crime victims involved in a criminal procedure experience difficulties that are different from problems encountered by other victims. In trying to meet the specific procedural needs of hate crime victims many EU Member States have introduced protective measures and services in criminal proceedings, but the adopted approaches are widely disparate. By reporting the results of an EU-wide comparative survey into hate crime victims within national criminal procedures the authors aim to: (1) make an inventory of the national (legal) definitions of hate crime and the protection measures available (on paper) for hate crime victims; and (2) critically discuss certain national choices, inter alia by juxtaposing the procedural measures to the procedural needs of hate crime victims to see if there are any lacunae from a victimological perspective. The authors conclude that the Member States should consider expanding their current corpus of protection measures in order to address some of the victims’ most urgent needs.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to highlight an urgent need for new and improved approaches to supporting hate crime victims and tackling hate crime perpetration in the light of escalating levels of hate crime and growing concerns over the effectiveness of existing interventions and support structures.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws from the authors’ own extensive fieldwork conducted with more than 2,000 victims of hate crime over a series of recent studies. The research was designed to uncover lived experiences of hate crime, to understand the physical and emotional harms suffered by victims and their families, and to identify ways of improving the quality of support offered to victims.
Findings
The findings illustrate that current responses to hate crime are hampered by a range of perceived challenges and barriers to justice which exacerbate the harms associated with hate crimes. This includes low levels of public awareness of relevant policies, laws and support services, a lack of meaningful engagement between professionals and marginalised communities and a failure to provide victim-centred criminal justice interventions.
Practical implications
This paper includes a number of recommendations in relation to how scholars, policy makers and professionals can overcome the failings that have been identified, which includes prioritising engagement with diverse communities, improving awareness of hate crime and generating a more comprehensive evidence base on hate crime perpetration.
Originality/value
These themes discussed within this paper are based upon the views and experiences of an extensive sample of hate crime victims, many of whom have never previously shared their stories with researchers, the police or any other support organisations.
There is an ongoing debate amongst hate crime scholars about the categories of victims that should be included within hate crime legislation. Some commentators argue that affording protection to groups based on predefined characteristics results in many victims being excluded from the legislation. They would prefer a more inclusive approach that would offer protection to a potentially limitless number of groups. This paper considers the question from a doctrinal perspective, and argues that a principled way of deciding the characteristics of hate crime is required. It will conclude that the core concern of hate crime legislation is with the furthering of the broader equality agenda and, as such, the victims of hate crime should form an exclusive group based on those characteristics protected under equality legislation. This approach can help provide a theoretical framework for hate crime legislation that can be more easily accommodated within criminal law principles.
Both police report and victim survey data estimate that between 10 and 20 percent of all hate crimes are motivated by a religion bias. Yet, the volume of research on religion-related hate crimes pales in comparison to research examining race-based or sexuality-based hate crimes. We examine two data sources, the Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), to assess trends and patterns in hate crimes involving religion. The UCR, which is based on police reports, suggests a downward trend in the number of religion-related hate crimes that mirrors the overall downward trend for all hate crimes. The NCVS, which is based on victim reports, suggests that religion-related hate crimes have been relatively stable in both number and as a proportion of all hate crimes. We conclude by suggesting potential directions for future research and data collection.
The hate crime concept describes a set of actions that span the worlds of activism, policy, and scholarship and provides the basis for these actors to work together and open up the rule of law to communities that often exist outside its protection. However, there is huge diversity in current approaches across and within these worlds to recording, reporting, legislating against, and researching hate crime, which challenges the notion of a shared and global concept of hate crime. This article offers a framework that helps describe the processes and relationships that generate and refine national and international concepts of hate crime. In so doing, it starts to assess to what extent an internationally coherent approach to understanding and responding to targeted, bigoted violence has been achieved.
This article examines the symbolic function of hate crime law. By challenging the norms that sustain and promote prejudice, hate crime law seeks to contribute to claims for social justice on behalf of victim groups. This symbolic function cannot be achieved by legal rules alone. Drawing upon theories of emotional thinking, the article argues that the moral work of hate crime laws is dependent upon the capacity of victim groups to engender compassionate thinking that helps reconfigure perceptions of them as dangerous, illegitimate or inferior Others. This analysis seeks to contribute to our understanding of the processes through which some minority communities fall short of the image of ideal victims capable of contributing to the moral claim embedded in hate crime law.
This article suggests that the concepts of vulnerability and ‘difference’ should be focal points of hate crime scholarship if the values at the heart of the hate crime movement are not to be diluted. By stringently associating hate crime with particular strands of victims and sets of motivations through singular constructions of identity, criminologists have created a divisive and hierarchical approach to understanding hate crime. To counter these limitations, we propose that vulnerability and ‘difference’, rather than identity and group membership alone, should be central to investigations of hate crime. These concepts would allow for a more inclusive conceptual framework enabling hitherto overlooked and vulnerable victims of targeted violence to receive the recognition they urgently need.
Like all emotions, hate is comprised of a number of interacting, sometimes contradictory, feelings. This article looks at hate as a form of affect that is tied to the collective sense of estrangement that exists between insider and outsider groups. This link between hatred and estrangement is closely connected to the assumption that the perpetrators of 'real' hate crime are predominantly strangers to the victim. By drawing upon the results of a study into racial and homophobic harassment recorded by the London Metropolitan Police Service, the article questions the stranger-danger image of hate crime and explores the significance of location to the ways in which victims and perpetrators of harassment know each other. It suggests that the spatial ambiguity embodied by estrangement - physical proximity coupled with emotional distance - injects an ambivalence into the victim-perpetrator relationship that has implications for the definition of all hate crime.
Youth hate crimes are a societal problem in which young people turn extremist ideas into acts of violence. To develop methods for prevention, early identification, and intervention, mental health professionals must have an awareness and understanding of this issue. To provide a basis for developing such an understanding, the authors review the current research related to youth hate crimes.
The authors review the literature primarily from the past 10 years on youth hate crimes.
Studies have established that most hate crimes are committed by single or small groups of young males unaffiliated with organized hate groups. Although limited information is available about the causative factors of hatred, a variety of prevention and intervention strategies have been employed. Yet, little has been done to evaluate these various initiatives. Unfortunately, there is a paucity of literature available to guide mental health professionals in the identification, evaluation, and treatment of offenders, despite increasing concerns and awareness regarding the profound consequences of acts of hatred and extremism.
Heightened public awareness and greater understanding of the epidemiology and nature of hate crimes is necessary if perpetrators are to be recognized and effective interventions developed. To achieve this goal, databases of juvenile hate crimes must be developed nationwide, and the success of preventive, educational, and alternative sentencing programs must be assessed. Mental health professionals play a critical role in the detection and treatment of juvenile perpetrators, and it is incumbent upon them to develop interventions for individuals and communities affected by hate crimes.
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