A Shared Global Perspective on Hate Crime?

Abstract

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.

Bias Crime Policing: 'The Graveyard Shift'

“…The results of the study show that there have been many challenges in 'migrating' (Perry 2016) bias crime to policing in NSW. This does not mean there has been no progress.…”

“…Community policing mechanisms designed to improve relationships with minority groups have had mixed success, especially when diluted by 'command and control' styles of policing (Bartkowiak-Théron and Asquith 2015; Chan 1997). There is a small body of research that examines the responses of Australian police services to bias crime (Mason et al 2017;Wiedlitzka et al 2018), but what is missing from the literature is an examination of the reasons why bias crime is yet to make a 'successful migration' (Perry 2016) to some policing organisations.…”

Enhancing Participatory Strategies With Designerly Ways for Sociolegal Impact: Lessons From Research Aimed at Making Hate Crime Visible

“…Reasons for this slow progress include a lack of trust by victims 3 in public authorities such that they do not report or remain engaged with the criminal justice process; of skill, knowledge and commitment within public authorities to identify, support and protect victims of hate crime; of connection and cooperation, including around information sharing, across public authorities and with civil society organisations (CSOs) that support victims; and of consistency in legal approaches to defining and responding to hate crime (FRA, 2018; Perry, 2016; Schweppe et al, 2018). Indeed, there is active debate about the conceptual contours of hate crime: Which groups and types of crime, and what quality and quantity of ‘hate’, should fall within its boundaries (Chakraborti and Garland, 2012; Hall, 2013; Iganski, 2008; Perry, 2009)?…”

Participatory and Designerly Strategies for Sociolegal Research Impact: Lessons from Research Aimed at Making Hate Crime Visible

“…Reasons for this slow progress include a lack of trust by victims 4 in public authorities such that they do not report or remain engaged with the criminal justice process; of skill, knowledge and commitment within public authorities to identify, support and protect victims of hate crime; of connection and cooperation, including around information sharing, across public authorities and with civil society organisations (CSOs) that support victims; and of consistency in legal approaches to defining and responding to hate crime (FRA 2018;Perry 2016;Schweppe et al 2018). Indeed, there is active debate about the conceptual contours of hate crime: Which groups and types of crime, and what quality and quantity of 'hate', should fall within its boundaries (Hall 2012;Iganski 2008;Chakraborti and Garland 2012;Perry 2009)?…”

“…The wellbeing of law as a practical idea, one that is socially meaningful, is dependent on its ability to accommodate and nurtures diversity ('social unity') by 'facilitat [ing] communication' about the 'need' for 'respect' for 'all'; as well as by enforcing that need by challenging inequality and bias' (Cotterrell, 2018: 31, 33 and 170). Hate crime is new conceptual typology of violence, the insertion of which into the existing structure of a legal system generates new shared 'spaces' in which publics/stakeholders can work to address it as an empirical reality (Perry, 2014). In this way the legal system begins to accommodate, respect and nurture diverse, previously invisible, peoples; and it is itself enriched.…”