Bias Crime Policing: 'The Graveyard Shift'

Abstract

Bias crime is crime that is motivated by prejudice or bias towards an attribute of the victim, such as race, religion or sexuality. Police have been criticised for failing to take bias crime seriously, and there is a pressing need to understand the reasons for this failure. This article aims to address this gap by presenting the results of the first empirical study of bias crime policing in the Australian state of New South Wales (NSW). Drawing on interviews with the NSW Police Force (NSWPF), the study found that sustainable reform in this domain has proven elusive. This can be attributed to a number of key challenges including reporting, recording, identification, framing, community engagement and leadership. The lessons that emerge from the findings have important ramifications for all police organisations.

A Conceptual Framework to Map Responses to Hate Crime, Hate Incidents and Hate Speech: The Case of Australia

“…The first step of our mapping of anti-hate efforts in Australia was an exploratory search using Google. It was based on a list of thirty keywords we identified based on our understanding of the field, and a selective review of relevant Australian articles on the topic (see, for example, Poynting and Noble, 2004;Asquith, 2012;Benier et al, 2016;Wickes et al, 2016;Benier, 2017;Mason, 2019;Mason and Moran, 2019). The keywords People or property merely associated withor even perceived to be a member ofa group that shares a protected characteristic, such as human rights defenders, community centres or places of worship, can also be targets of hate crimes.…”

Asian Australians’ Experiences of Racism during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Lack of trust in the recipients of the report is the most common barrier to reporting hate crime identified in numerous empirical studies across the world, and it is generally related to the relationship between the community of the hate crime target (or the witness) and the police (e.g., Cuerden & Blakemore 2019;Mason & Moran 2019;Wickes et al 2016). This barrier can also be explained by previous personal reporting experiences of the target (or the target's community), and it may be attributable to the perception that police officers will not trust the target, will not take the incident seriously, or will be unwilling to act upon the report (Sin et al 2009;Wickes et al 2016).…”

Tackling Hate in Australia: Stocktake Report 2019-2020

“…We started by exploring the terrain. We used Google to search a list of 30 keywords that we identified based on our understanding of the field, and a selective review of relevant Australian articles on the topic (see for example Asquith, 2012;Benier, 2017;Benier et al, 2016;Mason 2019;Mason and Moran, 2019;Poynting and Noble, 2004;Wickes et al, 2016). The keywords were based on our focus on hate crime, hate speech and hate incidents against minority groups that commonly are the target of hate in Australia, as well as on related concepts, such as the various "isms" and "phobias" -e.g.…”