A Study on the Disability Hate Crime: Convergent Approach of Correction and Welfare

This study aimed to analyse the emergence and development of Disability Hate Crime as a policy area in the criminal justice system in England and Wales. It did this through building an understanding of the contributory factors including the challenges within the criminal justice system, wider government and politics, the independent statutory sector and disabled peoples organisations that led to the emergence and development of Disability Hate Crime policy and practice. This study contributes the first comprehensive analysis of the emergence and development of Disability Hate Crime in England and Wales to hate crime studies. Using a case study approach the thesis triangulates evidence from interviews in activist, policy and political streams, from hate crime cases and analysis of policy documents to chart this policy journey. It analyses the journey from agenda invisibility through agenda triggering to significant institutionalised actions on Disability Hate Crime in the criminal justice system, showing the roles of activism, politics and policy making in shaping this policy process. It underscores the analysis of this policy journey with a key focus on problematisation in policy making on Disability Hate Crime. This study found that Disability Hate Crime has faced challenges in its emergence and development as a policy area in the criminal justice system. It has faced challenges at each stage of the policy journey from initial agenda triggering, through agenda setting and onto agenda institutionalisation. This study concludes that Disability Hate Crime is an unsettled and unsettling policy agenda with agenda institutionalisation, as an established predictable area of policy and practice, some way off, despite legislation in 2003. The study found that: - Disability Hate Crime remains an unsettled policy agenda in that it displays an unsettled discourse, varied ways of responding, a need for ongoing national strategic action, and limited transition into day-to-day routine business. - Disability Hate Crime is an unsettling policy agenda in that it challenges understandings of hostility and prejudice beyond direct manifestations of hostility. It is also unsettling in that it raises a dual problematisation of targeted crimes against disabled people as either hostility targeting or vulnerability targeting. This reflects a wider dual problematisation of disability as either an issue of welfare or as an issue of rights. - Current understandings of disability hostility reflect under recognition of disability discrimination and linked ideologies of ableism and disablism. This under recognition of disability hostility lead to justice failures in Disability Hate Crime cases. Constructions of the targeting of disabled people in crime as based on vulnerability lacks recognition of such targeting as biased, hostile targeting of disabled people. This study reconceptualises disability hostility as hostility including vulnerability targeting. Arising from these conclusions, on an optimistic note, this study recommends a change to hate crime law which recognises that disability hostility can be based on hostility demonstration, a hostility motivation or hostile targeting because of disability. This study concludes that rather than institutionalisation of Disability Hate Crime as day-to-day hate crime business, it still remains unusual business. This study contributes a reconceptualization of the concept of disability hostility to include targeting because of disability – ‘disability vulnerability’. It makes the case for varied legal provisions to reflect the protection requirements of different hate crime strands. It adds to the body of case studies on public policy making. Finally, it illuminates the influence of equality law on Disability Hate Crime policy making.

Blaming the victim: disability hate crime

Making disablist hate crime visible: addressing the challenges of improving reporting: Chih Hoong Sin

The term ‘disablist hate crime’ is contested; it is used as shorthand for myriad manifestations of hostility, violent attacks, including physical and sexual assault, rape, theft, murder, captivity and damage to property (Thomas, 2011). A common understanding of the term ‘hate crime’ is hostile actions against individuals with certain characteristics. The actions can involve opportunistic street crime, physical assault and damage to residences, including arson. The perpetrators do not usually have a relationship with their victims, but may be known to live within the same neighbourhood. They are generally considered to be motivated by hatred of a perceived group. There are similarities between these types of targeted attacks against disabled people and people in other identity groups, such as BME communities, lesbians and gay men, and transgender people (Macdonald, 2008). ‘Hate crime’ is officially recognised (Crown Prosecution Service, 2007). Earlier critical analysis of ‘hate crime’ has been developed from knowledgeof racist ‘hate crime’, forming a useful basis from which to develop, but the use of a ‘race model’ as the template for disablist hate crime policy is seen by some as misplaced (Roulstone, Thomas and Balderston, 2011). For example, a racist attack on an individual may be, or may be taken to be, an attack on a community, and where that community has the capacity there may be reprisals and events can escalate. This is not the case with disablist hostility, since disabled people are often isolated, not part of a community, and possibly even isolated from their own families. Iganski’s (2008) study highlighted the opportunistic nature of most racist ‘hate crime’, everyday conflicts aggravated by racist hostility, often committed by ordinary people going about their ordinary business. The person who is attacked may recognise their attackers as being local. There does not seem to be any attempt to feign friendship in order to carry out this type of attack, nor to steal cash or goods. In comparison there are few recorded incidents of this kind against disabled people. However, there is a growing body of evidence, and growing media interest raising the profile of disablist hostility. There are reports of disabled people being subjected to opportunistic hostility, and of disabled people being singled out and victimisedGrattet and Jenness (2001) question the usefulness of a concept of crime whichis motivated by perceived difference. They question the benefits of emphasising what could be seen as a ‘special needs’ approach, since this reinforces, rather than alleviates, cultural differences between individuals in different social and administrative groups. But they also realise that treating people as if they are all the same does not challenge stereotypes and does not equalise people’s situation, creating a ‘dilemma of difference’. Reducing the issue to an individual level does not convey the influences of cultures, which allow and perpetuate the oppression of certain groups. Acts of hostility against disabled people on the street or in neighbourhoods, bullying and harassment – such as name calling, throwing missiles at individuals, or at their homes, indicate similarities with incidents which are recognised as ‘hate crime’ against other groups. These acts of hostility against a disabled person may not amount to crime, but nevertheless hurt psychologically and emotionally. A disabled person who has been attacked knows that they are more likely to be targeted again than a person without that characteristic (Macdonald, 2008); the cumulative effect is demonstrated in the case of Fiona Pilkington.

Grounded in group conflict theory and the defended neighborhoods thesis, this nationwide empirical study of cities and their residential segregation levels examines the occurrence of hate crime using data for all U.S. cities with populations over 95,000 and Uniform Crime Reporting data for hate crime, in conjunction with 2000 census data. Hate crime is any illegal act motivated by pre-formed bias against, in this case, a person’s real or perceived race. This research asks: Do hate crime levels predict white/black segregation levels? How does hate crime predict different measures of white/black segregation? I use the dissimilarity index measure of segregation operationalized as a continuous, binary, and ordinal variable, to explore whether hate crime predicts segrega- tion of blacks from whites. In cities with higher rates of hate crime there was higher dissimilarity between whites and blacks, controlling for other factors. The segregation level was more likely to be “high” in a city where hate crime occurred. Blacks are continually multiply disadvantaged and distinctly affected by hate crime and residential segregation. Prior studies of residential segregation have focused almost exclusively on individual choice, residents’ lack of finances, or discriminatory actions that prevent racial minorities from moving, to explore the correlates of segregation. Notably absent from these studies are measures reflecting the level of hate crime occurring in cities. This study demonstrates the importance of considering hate crime and neighborhood conflict when contemplating the causes of residential segregation.

This chapter traces the journey from hate crime to Disability Hate Crime through an analysis of the relevant literature including policy related documents which 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 ambiguous concept. Nonetheless, it is now recognized as a ‘social fact’ with an active policy domain and set of policies and practices. A review of the key academic literature on Disability Hate Crime and its relationship to hate crime literature in general is set out, as well as a review of the significant literature produced by the independent statutory sector, the community sector and by individual authors. Here is set out the critical consideration of the journey from hate crime to Disability Hate Crime that follows and that is concerned with how Disability Hate Crime policy and practice emerged and developed, and equally on seeking to explain why it emerged as and when it did in hate crime.

Acts of hostility against people with disabilities remain largely overlooked by academia and the UK government. Despite this, between 2014/15-2016/17 the known incidents of disability hate crime in the UK increased by 249% with hate crime reports on Britain’s railways increasing by 23% between 2015/16-2016/17. Although estimates suggest that 19% of the global population has a disability and whilst public transport is a recognised trigger-environment for hate attacks against disabled people, no dedicated research existed, until now, to understand the victim experience. The key aims of this thesis are to transform academic understanding, methodology and theoretical frameworks.Public transport providers have an equality duty to protect all passengers; if not undertaken, minority groups remain susceptible. This thesis explores victim experiences through in-depth, semi-structured interviews and focus groups with 56 participants. Public transport staff members were interviewed and policies explored to understand how diligently authorities, providers and staff meet their legal obligations to protect susceptible passengers as obliged by the Public Sector Equality Duty. To enable engagement with people who possess a range of physical and mental disabilities, specific ethical considerations and adaptions were employed and diverse communications facilitated.Findings reveal everyday abuse, distress and violence affecting disabled passengers and fuelling aversions to using public transport often results in social isolation. Conflicts can be triggered by occupancy of priority spaces with most abuse occurring on buses. Staff members hold little awareness of the problem or confidence to manage it. Most authorities do not discharge their safeguarding obligations, consequently providers are not incentivised to safeguard. The thesis outlines the implications of these findings for scholarship and policy offering recommendations which are designed to raise awareness of the problem and improve access to justice.

PurposeThis paper aims to consider the relationship between disability hate crime and safeguarding adults. It critically considers whether safeguarding responses to disability hate crime have changed following the implementation of the Care Act 2014. Historically, protectionist responses to disabled people may have masked the scale of hate crime and prevented them from seeking legal recourse through the criminal justice system (CJS). This paper investigates whether agencies are working together effectively to tackle hate crime.Design/methodology/approachThe research presented draws on semi-structured interviews with key informants who work with disabled people and organisations as part of a wider study on disability hate crime.FindingsPrior to the Care Act, safeguarding practice often failed to prioritise criminal justice interventions when responding to reports of disability hate crimes. Improving engagement within multi-agency safeguarding hubs and boards has the potential to increase hate crime awareness and reporting.Research limitations/implicationsThis research was limited in scope to 15 participants who worked in England within safeguarding teams or with victims of hate crime.Practical implicationsRaising the profile of disability hate crime within safeguarding teams could lead to achieving more effective outcomes for adults at risk: improving confidence in reporting, identifying perpetrators of hate crimes, enabling the CJS to intervene and reducing the risk of further targeted abuse on the victim or wider community.Originality/valueThis paper is original in its contribution in this field as there is a dearth of research on the relationship between safeguarding and disability hate crime.

In England and Wales, Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 made disability hate crimes legal. This advocated for increased sentencing for perpetrators whose crimes were motivated by or demonstrated hate against a person with a handicap or a perceived disability. Currently, this additional sentencing provision is the only legal option for prosecuting disability hate crime perpetrators. This thesis explores the experience and aftermath of hate crimes committed against England’s cognitively challenged senior victim group. The cognitively challenged elderly victim group is far more likely to face bias and violence; they have a greater likelihood of re-victimisation and suffer significant suffering as a result of hate crimes. To date, the voices of cognitively deficient elderly victims and survivors have been mostly absent from scholarly research and hate crime policies. As a result, the purpose of this article is to look into present policy barriers and how the cognitively challenged senior victim group might best receive support, justice, and interventions following discriminatory hate crimes. There has been little examination and discussion of intersectionality in disability studies and hate crime research. Common ideas fail to adequately reflect the multifaceted, overlapping, and complex experiences of danger and victimisation. This paper builds on studies on hate crimes against the cognitively deficient elderly victim group. It noted the challenge of categorising individual encounters as one type of hate crime. Victims and their relatives recognised that they were targeted for a variety of reasons, including their inability to care for themselves and their age. The study contends that the present strand-based approach to hate crime conceals a multitude of cross-identity characteristics that, when combined, might raise the danger of victimisation while decreasing a victim’s chance of reporting their experiences. To address vulnerability, safety, and hate crime against disabled people in England and Wales’ criminal justice, health, social care, and refuge systems, barriers to including the cognitively impaired senior victim group in the policy process are presented, allowing for targeted suggestions and changes on relevant issues.

Many disabled people experience fear, harassment and occasionally violence in an array of public and private spaces, yet the issue remains unexamined by geographers of disability. To address this research gap, the paper develops a critical geography of disability “hate crime.” Extreme, yet rare, violent acts against disabled people constitute the popular and policy imagination of disability hate crime. While clearly important, these cases characterise disability hate crime as individually‐targeted placeless acts of extreme abjection against disabled people. At the same time, they arguably draw attention away from everyday “low‐level” harassment, name‐calling, fear, and neglect experienced by many in mainstream spaces and the impact on senses of social inclusion and belonging. Citing “race”‐related hate crime studies, which have recognised the role of social and physical environments in shaping incidence, the paper seeks to shift research and, in turn, policy on disability hate crime towards the local and micro‐scale spaces and moments within which incidents occur, and the social relations that constitute these acts, in the context of an exclusionary disablist society. The paper is organised in two parts: first, evidence of harassment and violence experienced by disabled people (UK‐focused) is examined and the emergence of disability “hate crime” critiqued; second, a critical geography of disability hate crime is developed, applying insights from hate crime studies and relational geographies of disability. The paper concludes by setting out an agenda for Geography's potential contribution to disability and wider hate crime research.

Disability hate crime is an area of "academic, campaign and Government interest" yet understanding this is in its infancy. It incorporates targeted violence, abuse, harassment and public disorder towards disabled individuals, communities and their environments. Sexual violence has been identified as a dominant method of disability hate crime towards disabled women and underscores the importance of evaluating the intersections of both gender and disability when attempting to understand the experiences of hate crime victims. Consequently, an application of intersectionality to researching disablist crimes encourages the consideration of multiple, overlapping and complicated experiences of risk and victimisation. This chapter is based on empirical evidence from a broader project looking at disabled people's experiences of hate crime, here focusing specifically on the ways in which disabled women have experienced hate crime. It starts by evaluating current literature on disability hate crimes against women, before outlining the methodology involved in the empirical research process. Intersectional analysis of disabled women's experiences will illustrate the difficulty in categorising individual experiences through a single strand of hate crime. Evidence from disabled women exposed experiences of historical and repeated sexual violence which can be conceptualised through hate crime and gendered violence. The context and circumstances surrounding disabled women's experiences will be considered, as well as the responses by the criminal justice system. The chapter concludes by positioning these findings within wider academic discourses around violence against women.

‘Hate crimes’ hurt more than similar, but otherwise motivated crimes. This has increasingly been acknowledged and understood by criminal justice agencies in a number of countries, by supra-national policy bodies and civil society organisations concerned with fundamental human rights, and by those in the civil and public sectors working to support victims of ‘hate crime’. A substantial body of evidence about the personal injuries of ‘hate crime’ has now accumulated to support the notion that ‘hate crimes hurt more’. This chapter extends the evidence base further by unfolding some new data on the physical, emotional, and behavioural injuries of ‘hate crime’. It also suggests that understanding the particular impacts of ‘hate crime’ can serve to inform appropriate and effective support for victims and inform the training of those working with victims.

In the United States, the dominant approach to responding to various forms of interpersonal violence, such as intimate violence or bias attacks, supports and expands the state apparatus of incarceration. For communities of color and LGBTQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer) communities who are already at risk for institutional violence, solutions that are built on a foundation of criminalization become a source of violence as they intensify policing mechanisms. These uneasy dynamics can be examined through a closer look at legislation intended to protect survivors of intimate violence and hate crimes. Analyzing the emergence of legislative responses to violence that is committed against people who are marginalized because of their race, religion, ethnicity, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and disability provides an insight into systematized sociopolitical institutions, such as the state incarceration apparatus. Legislation that addresses “violence against women” and “hate crimes” are used both against and in “protection of” Asian American communities and offer illustrative examples of the relationship between individualized violence and state violence. In this Article, we examine how these legislative acts exclude, neglect, and punish survivors who deviate from the parameters of the “model minority victim.” Next, we examine the impact of these different legal remedies -- how they expand state criminalization of immigrant communities and perpetuate negative stereotypes of people of color, and how they rely on the criminal-legal infrastructure in the United States for “safety” and “punishment” and serve to build the perpetually expanding prison system. Finally, we examine the potential for transformative justice strategies as a response to individualized violence that do not rely on the state. We look at the ways in which state-based responses to violence contribute to race-based discrimination and fail to encourage solidarity among people of color. Instead, we propose a shift away from state-based responses to community-based responses that identify all forms of violence whether personal, political, state, or systemic.

During recent years ‘disability hate crime’ has become a major political and criminal justice concern due to a number of high-profile murders in the United Kingdom. The aim of this article is to compare disability-motivated hate crimes with other hate crimes motivated by homophobic or racist bias. This study employs a quantitative methodology utilising data collected by the ARCH hate crime recording system over a 10-year period (2005–2015). The data findings illustrate a number of variations concerning incidents reported by disabled people regarding violence and threatening behaviour, when compared with incidents motivated by race/faith or homophobic bias.

The aim of this research scoping review was to assemble an evidence base for the UK on mental health service user experiences and perspectives on mental health-related targeted violence and hostility ('disability hate crime'). It also aims to address some of the gaps in the knowledge on risk management, help-seeking and prevention from the perspectives of those who experienced targeted violence and hostility because of their mental health problems or psychiatric status. Seven key mental health and social care bibliographic databases were searched for relevant UK research studies from 1990 until 2016. Grey literature was identified through online searches. A scoping review charting approach and thematic analysis methodology were used to analyse the studies. In total 13 studies were finally included, over half of which used survey methods. All studies included people with experiences of mental health problems. The studies provide information on: the types of potential hate crime; indicate where incidents take place; give some insight into the victims' relationship with the perpetrators; the location of incidents as well as the psychological, social, financial and physical impacts on the victim; the types of help-seeking behaviours adopted by the victims; a range coping strategies that people with mental health problems adopted in response to experiences of targeted violence or abuse. This scoping review provides a UK-based overview of mental health service user concepts and experiences of mental health-related targeted violence and hostility ('disability hate crime'). It reveals some specific issues relating to mental health and disability hate crime. Further investigation into disability hate crime with a specific focus on mental health is required. This is a UK-based overview, which offers a useful comparator for researchers, practitioners and policy-makers internationally.