Acknowledgement, Recognition and Response: The Criminal Justice System and Hate Crime in Northern Ireland

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

Criminal Justice in Transition: The Northern Ireland ContextA.‐M. McAlinden and C. Dwyer (Eds.). Oxford: Hart (2015) 386pp. £49.50hb ISBN 978–1849465779

Pushing the boundaries in Northern Ireland: young people, violence and sectarianism

Acceleration and deceleration are important given football is an intermittent sport with constant changes in velocity and direction. It is unclear, however, if the accelerations and decelerations performed by players differ between competition levels. The aim of the present study was to compare the acceleration, deceleration, and high-speed running profiles of players during international and domestic matches and to determine if differences were apparent across playing positions (defenders, midfielders, and attackers). GPS data from 21 Australian women's domestic football league matches over 2 seasons (2016–2018) and 15 Australian women's international matches (2017–2018) were collected and analyzed. Movement pattern data was collected using VX Sport and GPSports 10 Hz GPS receivers. Variables analyzed included: total distance, distance covered high-speed running (16–20 km·h−1) distance covered sprinting (> 20 km·h−1) and time spent accelerating and decelerating in four predetermined bands (1–2 m·s−2, 2–3 m·s−2, 3–4 m·s−2, and > 4 m·s−2). Results revealed that players competing in international matches covered significantly greater total distances, greater high-speed running distances and greater sprinting distances as well as spending a greater duration accelerating in band 4 compared to players in domestic competitions (p < 0.05). Players competing in international matches spent significantly less duration decelerating in bands 2 and 3, compared to players in domestic competitions. International defenders and midfielders recorded significantly higher total distances and high-speed running distance compared to players in domestic matches. Our findings suggest that preparing players for international-level competition should include progressive exposure to high-speed running and sprinting distances, as well as high magnitude accelerations. Furthermore, the higher running speeds experienced by players during international matches appears to be a result of less time spent decelerating. The optimal deceleration necessary for specific situations appears important and emphasizes the need for specific deceleration training. The increased effort of high-intensity activity that is required for players competing in international matches affects defenders and midfielders to the greatest degree. Gradual exposure to the increased running demands for midfielders and defenders competing in international matches is needed to improve performance and reduce the potential risk of injury.

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.

A study on reported crimes has been conducted in order to broaden the knowledge concerning homophobic hate crimes in Sweden. What happened between whom, where, and when? And what did the reports result in? Hate crimes are to be prioritized by the criminal justice system; does this actually happens, and is the clause governing increased sentence severity in the Penal Code applied? Above all, the study focuses on the issue of what constitutes a hate crime, and on the actors who constructs hate crimes. The study is based on police‐recorded offences, assumed by the police to be hate crimes. A good half of the 614 reports recorded 2004 is included and followed up through the criminal justice system. The results are presented by typical cases and display that the events just as often occur between acquaintances as between strangers, that the suspects generally speaking are quite young, approximately 25% have not reached the age of criminal responsibility. The arenas are public places, the home, schools, places of amusement, as well as the Internet, cellphones, and similar media. Less than 10% of the reported offences end up as verdicts. This is due to, of course, the fact that the demands for an offence to be registered by the police are much less rigorous than the demands made on a case to result in a verdict. But apart from ‘natural legal waste’ in terms of misunderstandings, meagre information, and difficulties to produce evidence, there is an extra factor added in these cases. It seems that the police apply a more inclusive definition of ‘hate crime’ compared to prosecutors and courts. While the former register ‘homophobic hate crimes’, where ‘anyone’ can be a victim, the latter use the more narrow concept of ‘hate crimes against homosexuals’. Thereby treating a negligible amount of the reports as hate crimes.

Following the rise in hate crime in Northern Ireland, in 2019 the Northern Ireland Assembly appointed Judge Marrinan to conduct a review into hate crime. Publishing his findings in his review in December 2020, this article examines the key recommendations that should be included in a Hate Crime Bill. As the Assembly is currently suspended, the article examines the hate crime statistics recorded following the publication of the review to illustrate why it is imperative that when it reconvenes, the Assembly introduce a Hate Crime Bill at the earliest opportunity. The article also argues that a prevention programme is introduced alongside the Bill to safeguard and prevent young people being drawn towards paramilitary activity along with hate crime and non-paramilitary terrorist activity. Young people are the focus of introducing an initial programme with the demographics in the hate crime statistics revealing a high number of offenders are that category. Following an examination of current programmes in place and the threat posed by paramilitaries and extremists, including the far right and extreme far right (neo-Nazis), the article recommends the current WRAP programme is developed to help and safeguard young people drawn to the paramilitaries to include hate crime and extremist related terrorism.

Future developments for hate crime thinking: who, what and why?, Neil Chakraborti Part One: Developing More Nuanced Understandings of Hate Crime 1. The more things change - post 9/11 trends in hate crime scholarship, Barbara Perry 2. The victimisation of Goths and the boundaries of hate crime, Jon Garland 3. Future challenges for hate crime policy: lessons from the past, Hannah Mason-Bish 4. Homophobic hate crime in Northern Ireland, Marian Duggan 5. Verbal and textual hostility in context, Nicole Asquith 6. Hate crime offenders, Jack McDevitt, Jack Levin, Jim Nolan and Susan Bennett Part Two: Developing More Nuanced Responses to Hate Crime 7. Law enforcement and hate crime: theoretical perspectives on the complexities of policing 'hatred', Nathan Hall 8. From hate to prevent: community safety and counter-terrorism, Derek McGhee 9. Hate crime victims and hate crime reporting: some impertinent questions, Kris Christmann and Kevin Wong 10. Racial aggravation or aggravating racism: overcoming the disjunction between legal and subjective realities, David Gadd 11. Healing harms and engendering tolerance: the promise of restorative justice for hate crime, Mark Walters and Carolyn Hoyle

Amatori, S, Helsen, WF, Baldari, C, Serra, T, Belli, A, Guidetti, L, Rocchi, MBL, Sisti, D, and Perroni, F. High-speed efforts of elite association football referees in national and international matches. J Strength Cond Res 38(8): e417-e422, 2024-Field referees (FRs) need to move throughout the pitch to identify any infringements of the game's laws. Their performance depends on technical, tactical, physical, physiological, and mental factors. This retrospective study aimed to examine and assess the physical and physiological parameters as a function of time in elite association football referees during official matches. Global positioning system (match time, distance in different intensity ranges [low-intensity, high-speed, very high-speed running, and sprinting], average and peak speed, distance in accelerations or decelerations) and heart rate (average and peak) data from 212 national and international football matches were analyzed. A linear mixed-model analysis was performed to assess the differences between halves and between the three 15-minute sections of each half-time for all the physical and physiological variables collected. A significant effect of match half was found for the game time (p < 0.001) and the standing time (p = 0.005), both higher in the second half, and for the average speed (p = 0.017), which was lower in the second half. Total distance (p < 0.001), low-intensity distance (p = 0.004), and average speed (p = 0.007) all showed a reduction as a function of time. More than 7.800 high-speed intervals were detected. Accelerative actions within 3 seconds characterized most of the high-speed efforts of an FR during a match. Significant differences emerged in the way the match intensity is distributed across the match, analyzed both in halves (first vs. second) and 15-minute intervals within each half. It is important to emphasize the importance of high-speed training with a focus on a faster transition from low- to high-speed running to keep up with the play to get into an appropriate position and subsequently make the correct decisions.

In the years that followed the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, the US federal government, cities, and states enacted sweeping reforms of the police and criminal justice system. To counter the narrative of racialized police violence and promote community policing, these included new hate crime statutes and dedicated bias-crime task forces. This article reviews the literature on the enforcement of hate crime, evaluates post-2020 antibias initiatives, and advises realistic expectations about the long-term impact of reform efforts. For starters, hate crimes are massively underreported. Even when reported, police often fail to accurately identify and charge a hate crime. Police officers exercise wide discretion, often accord hate crimes low priority, struggle to prove the bias motive of the offender, and come under political pressure to drop bias-motivated charges. Even when charged, few defendants are convicted of a hate crime because prosecutors frequently dismiss the hate crime charge. Prosecutors are expected to resolve cases quickly and may use a hate crime charge as leverage in plea bargaining. Media coverage, political pressure, and the involvement of victims and civil rights groups predict prosecutorial pursuit of a hate crime conviction. Hate crime policing and prosecutions may be enhanced by specialized hate crime units in police departments and prosecutors’ offices; clear policies that define terms and investigatory procedures; and enhanced communication between police, prosecutors, and target communities.

Blaming the victim: disability hate crime

In 1971 British Home Secretary Reginald Maudling suggested that the situation in Northern Ireland amounted to ‘an acceptable level of violence’. During ‘the Troubles’ this became the de facto security policy of successive British governments prepared to countenance a ‘manageable’ level of paramilitary activity. This reality supposedly changed irrevocably with the peace process and the 1997 Good Friday Agreement. Over the last fifteen years, however, Northern Ireland has been dubbed ‘the race hate capital of Europe’ with the ‘targeting of ethnic minorities’ by loyalist paramilitaries characterised as ‘ethnic cleansing’ by the police. The demography of Northern Ireland is changing, with eastern EU and non-white migrant workers arriving, which accentuates the reversing Protestant/Catholic differential and further undermines the ‘Protestant majoritarianism’ on which the state was founded. Alongside ‘flags protests’, racist violence has become one of the principal manifestations of unionist unease. The riposte by the state to racism has been to reach for empty models of ‘hate crime’ and ‘good relations’ alongside a criminal justice policy that appears to find acceptable a certain level of racist violence. Broadly, therefore, the author characterises the experience of people of colour and migrant workers in Northern Ireland as ‘living the peace process in reverse’. He concludes that this reality has profound implications – both for the future of Northern Ireland and for the ways in which we understand the relationship between the state and new forms of British nationalism across the UK.

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.

Experiences of criminal justice: Perspectives from Wales on a system in crisis By D.Newman, R.Dehaghani, Bristol: Bristol University Press. 2023. pp. 270. £80.00 (hbk); £26.99 (pbk); £26.99 (ebk). ISBN: 9781529214222; 9781529214239; 978152914246

This paper examines possible mechanisms behind the spike in racially or religiously-aggravated (RR) offences after the Brexit vote. It adds to the current literature in five significant ways: (1) it provides the first Brexit-related RR hate crime comparison between England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland; (2) it reports on results from a national-level panel model that adds to the debate in the literature on whether pro-leave or pro-remain areas saw greater increases hate crimes; (3) it assesses the role of demographic characterises on the variation in hate crime; (4) it compares the effect of the vote with other ‘trigger events’; and (5) it uses social media data to control for variation in hate crime victim and witness reporting.