Policing Hate Crime: Exploring the Issue with a Cohort of Sworn Police Officers

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to fill a research and literature gap by examining the nature and impact of hate crime victimisation on police officers, and their responses to it. The research explores victimisation due to the occupational stigma of policing and the personal characteristics and identities of individual officers.Design/methodology/approachThe research design is qualitative, based on 20 in-depth interviews with police officers in one English police force. Thematic analysis was applied to the data.FindingsAll participants had experienced hate crime arising from their occupational or personal identities. Initially shocked, officers became desensitized and responded in different ways. These include tolerating and accepting hate crime but also challenging it through communication and the force of law.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is based on a small sample. It does not claim to be representative but it is exploratory, aiming to stimulate debate and further research on a contemporary policing issue.Practical implicationsIf further research works were to confirm these findings, there are implications for police training, officer welfare and support, supervision and leadership.Originality/valueThe police occupy a problematic position within hate crime literature and UK legislation. This paper opens up debate on an under-researched area and presents the first published study of the hate crime experiences of police officers.

Much of the academic, practitioner and voluntary sector interest in victims of hate crime have focused upon the impacts of hate crime and the practical and emotional support needs and services for victims. Our own work has been somewhat divergent from this. We were commissioned to identify how hate crime reporting could be improved in a northern town, and made inclusive across different equality groups. We undertook a small scale study that examined individual decision making by hate crime victims in whether or not to report incidents, and how the available reporting arrangements and associated publicity materials affected these decisions (Wong & Christmann, 2008). Somewhat to our surprise, what appeared to be a critical issue in terms of whether or not hate crime policies were likely to succeed was also a much under researched area. Whilst our own research findings cannot be generalised beyond the study site, it did allow us to test out and consider more thoroughly some of the assumptions implicit in policy developments around hate crime reporting, specifically the policy goal of full reporting. We want to reflect back on these findings and the broader research literature to pose some questions on the adequacy and utility of the current reporting agencies approaches and the general policy direction to hate crime victims. We believe this has merit because the statutory criminal justice agencies and the voluntary sector are grappling with the challenges of adopting hate crime in its broadest sense, and providing a responsive, effective and victim centred service across markedly different vulnerable groups. Pertinent questions can be asked about what the current policies on hate crime can be expected to achieve given the nature of victim decision making on the critical issue of whether to report their victimisation. We will draw out some implications that the legacy of the Lawrence Inquiry has had for strategic thinking, policy making and make some tentative suggestions on how these might be improved. We argue something that may be considered heresy among hate crime victimloogy circles and victim campaigning groups; that the current policy message concerning victim reporting does not reflect reality, and risks being discredited. What is required, some 10 years post Lawrence is more nuanced responses and ones which acknowledge: the distance travelled by criminal justice agencies in the intervening years; that the majority of hate crime is manifested as single incidents of harassment (which may not necessarily constitute crimes); and the unlikelihood of full reporting by the public, which realistically fits where the public are in terms of their expectations. In doing so we do not pretend to have any authoritative answers to these issues, but believe the questions are worth posing to prompt a debate between efficacy of response versus a largely unchallenged view of hate crime victimology.

Hate crimes (or bias crimes) are crimes motivated by an offenders’ personal bias against a particular social group. Modern hate crimes legislation developed out of civil rights protections based on race, religion, and national origin; however, the acts that constitute a hate crime have expanded over time, as have the groups protected by hate crimes legislation. Anti-LGBT hate crimes, in which victims are targeted based on their sexual orientation or gender identity. LGBT people are highly overrepresented as victims of hate crimes given the number of LGBT people in the population, and this is especially true of hate crimes against transgender women. Despite the frequency of these crimes, the legal framework for addressing them varies widely across the United States. Many states do not have specific legislation that addresses anti-LGBT hate crimes, while others have legislation that mandates data collection on those crimes but does not enhance civil or criminal penalties for them, and some offer enhanced civil and/or criminal penalties. Even in states that do have legislation to address these types of hate crimes, some states only address hate crimes based on sexual orientation but not those based on gender identity. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act gives the federal government the authority to prosecute those crimes regardless of jurisdiction; however, this power has been used in a limited capacity. Hate crimes are distinct from other crimes that are not motivated by bias. For example, thrill seeking, retaliation, or the desire to harm or punish members of a particular social group often motivates perpetrators of hate crimes; these motivations often result in hate crimes being more violent than other similar crimes. The difference in the motivation of offenders also has significant consequences for victims, both physically and mentally. Victims of hate crimes are more likely to require medical attention than victims of non-bias crimes. Likewise, victims of hate crimes, and especially anti-LGBT hate crimes, often experience negative psychological outcomes, such as PTSD, depression, or anxiety as a result of being victimized for being a member of an already marginalized social group.

This work addresses a central question in both social problems theory and sociolegal studies: how can we understand and account for the content of legal categories that define social problems and attendant victims? It offers an empirical analysis of the emergence and evolution of federal hate crime laws—the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, the Violence Against Women Act, and the Rate Crimes Penalty Enhancement Act—that determine who is and is not eligible for hate crime victim status. By examining the legislative histories of these laws as evidence of “critical discursive moments” (Gamson 1992), I show how the substantive character of the law was shaped over time: 1 first establish a historical context for federal hate crime law: then I analyze how an important element hate crime law—the adoption of select status provisions, such as race, religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, and disabilities—unfolded such that some victims of discriminatory violence have been recognized as hate crime victims while others have gone unnoticed. In particular, people of color, Jews, gays and lesbians, women, and those with disabilities increasingly have been recognized as victims of hate crime, while union members, the elderly, children, and police officers, for example, have not. The findings suggest that the content of federal hate crime law was shaped by a series of temporally bound institutionally qualified processes whereby: 1) the empirical credibility of the scope of hate crime as a social problem was established by the claimsmaking of established social movement organizations; 2) a trio of core provisions for hate crime law—race, religion, and ethnicity—was cemented as the anchoring provisions of all hate crime law through discursive strategies that rendered particular types of violence empirically credible and worthy of federal attention; 3) the domain of the law expanded to include additional provisions, most notably sexual orientation and gender, in qualitatively distinct ways; and 4) the increased differentiation of legal subjects in subsequent law occurred in ways consistent with previously established and institutionalized policy pedigrees. Taken together, these findings reveal how microlevel processes of categorization work, mesolevel processes of social movement mobilization, and larger processes of institutionalization interface as political actors create and coalesce around legal meanings that define both “condition-categories” and “people-categories” (Loseke 1993).

We estimate the prevalence and characteristics of violent hate crime victimization of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in the United States, and we compare them to non-LGBT hate crime victims and to LGBT victims of violent non-hate crime. We analyze pooled 2017-2019 data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (n persons = 553, 925;n incidents = 32, 470), the first nationally representative and comprehensive survey on crime that allows identification of LGBT persons aged 16 or older. Descriptive and bivariate analysis show that LGBT people experienced 6.6 violent hate crime victimizations per 1,000 persons compared with non-LGBT people's 0.6 per 1,000 persons (odds ratio = 8.30, 95% confidence interval = 1.94, 14.65). LGBT people were more likely to be hate crime victims of sexual orientation or gender bias crime and less likely to be victims of race or ethnicity bias crimes compared to non-LGBT hate crime victims. Compared to non-LGBT victims, LGBT victims of hate crime were more likely to be younger, have a relationship with their assailant, and have an assailant who is white. Compared to LGBT victims of non-hate violence, more LGBT hate crime victims reported experiencing problems in their social lives, negative emotional responses, and physical symptoms of distress. Our findings affirm claims that hate crimes have adverse physical and psychological effects on victims and highlight the need to ensure that LGBT persons who experience hate crime get necessary support and services in the aftermath of the crime.

This research explored the content of hate crime prototypes in a North American context, with particular attention to how such prototypes might influence blame attributions. In Study 1a, participants were recruited from a blended sample of universities (n = 110) and community members (n = 102) and asked to report their thoughts about typical hate crime offenses, victims, and offenders. These open-ended responses were coded, and common themes were identified. In Study 1b, a new group of participants (n = 290) were presented with these themes and asked to rate each for their characteristics of hate crimes. Studies 1a and 1b confirmed the presence of a clear prototype of hate crimes, such that (a) perpetrators were believed to be lower status White men with clear expressions of bias, (b) hate crime offenses were believed to be acts of interpersonal violence accompanied by slurs or verbal abuse, and (c) hate crime victims were thought to be members of a marginalized group who remain passive during the offense. Study 2 explored the consequences of victim prototypes on assessments of victim blame. Participants (n = 296) were recruited from York University and presented with a case vignette that varied the prototypicality of a victim of hate, depicting him as either Black or White and either passive, verbally responsive, or physically confrontational in the context of an assault. Participants showed greatest sympathy for the Black victim who passively ignored verbal harassment but increasingly assigned blame when the Black victim spoke or reacted physically. When the victim was White, participants showed little variation in their assessment of blame as a function of the victim's behavior. These results suggest that Black victims are subjected to greater behavioral scrutiny than White victims and that sympathy for victims of hate may be contingent on their passivity in the face of harassment.

This study employed the articulated thoughts in simulated situations (ATSS) paradigm in the investigation of college students' thoughts upon confrontation with a conspiracy to commit a sexual-orientation-based hate crime versus a nonbias crime. In a between-subjects experimental design, participants were exposed to an audiotaped scenario depicting either the planning of a hate crime or a comparable nonhate crime. Content analysis of participants' articulated thoughts in response to these stimuli revealed that the hate crime resulted in more intentions to physically aggress against the perpetrator. This supports the notion that hate crimes have a greater potential than other crimes to lead to future violence. More people were also willing to intervene and help the hate crime victim than the nonhate crime victim. In addition, antigay attitudes turned out to be predictive of anger against the hate crime victim, disapproval of the hate crime victim, and support of the hate crime perpetrators. Implications of these findings, as well as suggestions for future research, are discussed.

Reviewed by: Tough on Hate?: The Cultural Politics of Hate Crimes by Clara S. Lewis Rebecca Barrett-Fox TOUGH ON HATE?: The Cultural Politics of Hate Crimes. By Clara S. Lewis. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press. 2013. Although gay college student Matthew Shepard’s murder was not legally deemed a hate crime, Shepard has become the paradigmatic hate crime victim, his image so often invoked that the federal legislation against hate crimes is named after him and lynching victim James Byrd, Jr. Though their murders raised national consciousness about bias-based violence, Clara S. Lewis argues in Tough on Hate?: The Cultural Politics of Hate Crimes, the media, politicians, and the general public have used their images in ways that paradoxically decry “hate” while undermining “our collective sense of culpability” (25) so that we cannot act on the ongoing structural oppression that incubates hate. Lewis posits that our well-meaning narratives about hate crimes demand a post-difference citizenship, “whereby members of historically marginalized groups and their allies are given access to public support by condoning post-difference ideology” (91). Victims of hate crimes (or their family members) must deny their difference, [End Page 142] which otherwise challenges ideas about national unity. Victims of anti–Arab/Muslim hate crimes must stress their love of America and Islam’s non-threatening nature. Racial minorities must be “race blind,” relegating race-based violence to the Civil Rights era (except in the exceptional case at hand). Victims of homophobic violence cannot be sexual but, like Shepard, childlike and from “spectacularly normal” backgrounds (96). Yet victims are selected precisely because they are not normative; their religious, ethnic, racial, and sexual identities place them outside of the norm. In a post-difference world, these identities don’t matter—except that they do, sometimes to the point of death. By erasing the very difference that inspired the crime, the public again victimizes with its “overwhelming desire to prove that we, the people within the community where the crime occurred, are better than the crime” (3). Hate crime narratives focus on the normality of the victim. (How tempting it is, as Matthew Shepard’s mother Judy speaks, to think, “That could have been my son!” Except that it wouldn’t ever be your son unless your son is gay). They also place the perpetrators outside of society, as “loners” on the “fringe.” The public’s desire to depict perpetrators, who are actually “disturbingly conformist” (85), as abnormal is motivated by the same need to view such crimes as abnormal rather than as “an expression of extended histories of often state-sponsored violence against minority groups and of broader contemporary social forces” (60). If victims really are different and perpetrators really are conformists, we could no longer see these crimes as unthinkable but as violent, predictable consequences of oppression. Lewis skillfully analyzes the rhetoric around hate crimes, examining news coverage, political hearings, legislation, and documentary films, and deploying theories from diverse disciplines in a way that will engage American Studies scholars. Unfortunately, it draws from a limited number of high-profile crimes—for example, no anti-Semitic crimes are examined. That said, it is easy enough for readers to imagine how the rich critiques that Lewis articulates here could be applied to other hate crimes and, more importantly, to our responses to them. Rebecca Barrett-Fox Arkansas State University Copyright © 2014 Mid-America American Studies Association

Hate crimes (e.g., anti-Asian and antisemitic) continue to be a problem in the United States. Federal laws protect specific groups (i.e., race, color, national origin, religion, gender/sex, gender identity, disability, and sexual orientation) from victimization of bias-motivated crimes. There is little research investigating how laypeople “know” whether a hate crime has occurred, as well as who they believe are hate crime offenders and victims. The current study explores laypeople's awareness and recognition of hate crimes, offenders, and victims that fit or do not fit their lay theories (e.g., stereotypes). More specifically, the study explores laypeople's (i.e., jurors’) lack of knowledge about federal hate crime legislation, offenders, and victims. The overarching research question is “What are people's lay beliefs about hate crimes, offenders, and victims?” A sample of jury-eligible participants was recruited through Prolific Academic. We conducted semi-structured interviews using quota sampling based on gender (men, women) and race (White, Asian, Black, Hispanic). We conducted a content analysis of the qualitative data. Results demonstrated that participants’ lay beliefs generally aligned with what federal law dictates; however, there were some non-protected groups that laypeople believed could still be victims of hate crimes. Additionally, results can inform researchers and policy makers about laypeople's beliefs about hate crimes, offenders, and victims, which can be applied broadly and to the context of juror decision-making. If laypeople's beliefs about hate crimes, offenders, and victims are inaccurate or do not align with the federal definition of hate crimes, they could subsequently make legally unsound and inaccurate decisions.

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

PurposeThird party reporting (TPR) services provide a route for victims of hate crime to report their experiences to an organisation other than the police. There is repeated evidence of under-reporting of hate crimes within the UK, and many victims of hate crime are unaware of the existence of TPR mechanisms. Little research attention has been given to understanding of the merits of TPR, beyond evaluating how often they are used. This study aims to explore the delivery of TPR from an advisor perspective.Design/methodology/approachThe research evaluated a small TPR centre based within a charitable organisation. The research, part of an undergraduate study, analysed the experiences of volunteer advisors working on the service through a semi-structured questionnaire.FindingsResults were mixed. Findings indicated the service contributed to an enhanced awareness of hate crimes in the community; however, greater promotion of the TPR centre was advocated. The results also indicated a significant lack of understanding and knowledge by trained volunteer advisors about hate crimes.Social implicationsA lack of informed awareness of what hate crimes are could result in victims of hate crime not being recognised or supported as such.Originality/valueMost hate crime research is victim centred, and this study is innovative in looking at those receiving hate crime reports. There is limited evidence on TPR service provision in the UK, particularly on service delivery staff, and this research contributes to the gap in knowledge.

This research study evaluates the efficacy of Ceres Tag, a livestock information platform that utilises a unique smart tag, in improving farm security by preventing, interrupting, and reducing livestock theft – a prevalent issue among farmers and landholders in countries like Australia. The Ceres Tag is equipped with an accelerometer and global navigation satellite system (GNSS) technology to collect data on animal health, welfare, movement, and traceability. It was hypothesised that the Ceres Tag could combat livestock theft by enabling interventions at three key stages: rapid prevention, tracking of stolen livestock, and recovery of stolen livestock. To assess this, a mock theft of livestock was staged, accompanied by a coordinated law enforcement response. Key findings include: (1) the Ceres Tag issued a ‘high activity alert’ to farmers, indicating significant livestock agitation, within 12 minutes of the mock theft initiation; (2) utilising the data, the New South Wales (NSW) Police were able to track and interrupt the livestock theft within 25 minutes; (3) the data enabled the NSW Police to repeatedly track and interrupt the theft on three separate occasions over a 110 kilometre distance and 90-minute period; and (4) following the thieves' arrival at their destination, the NSW Police, aided by the data, recovered the stolen livestock within 20 minutes. The Ceres Tag system increases the risk of criminal behaviour in often riskless rural settings, effectively ‘hardening’ livestock as targets through technological innovation. Furthermore, the platform provides farmers with tangible evidence of a crime, substantially expediting the crime reporting process. This timely reporting, coupled with the data provided by Ceres Tag, positions police for rapid and effective intervention, thereby enhancing their capacity to investigate and resolve incidents of livestock theft. Overall, the results suggest that the Ceres Tag offers a promising technological tool for farmers and law enforcement officers alike, aimed at fortifying farm security and minimizing livestock theft.

This paper presents findings from the All Wales Hate Crime Project. Most hate crime research has focused on discrete victim types in isolation. For the first time, internationally, this paper examines the psychological and physical impacts of hate crime across seven victim types drawing on quantitative and qualitative data. It contributes to the hate crime debate in two significant ways: (1) it provides the first look at the problem in Wales and (2) it provides the first multi-victim-type analysis of hate crime, showing that impacts are not homogenous across victim groups. The paper provides empirical credibility to the impacts felt by hate crime victims on the margins who have routinely struggled to gain support.

Recent years have witnessed an increase in highly publicized attacks targeting members of ethnoracial and religious minority groups. To date, existing research has primarily focused on the tendency for such "trigger events" to generate violent aftershocks. We argue that beyond such ripple effects, highly salient trigger events significantly increase hate-crime related stress among racial and ethnic minorities. Additionally, we explore whether these effects are limited to the group most clearly targeted, or if they "spill over" to other minoritized communities. To study reactions to hate crimes, we draw upon national survey data (N = 1,122) in combination with a natural experiment involving the Unite the Right rally and vehicle attack in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. We employ an "unexpected event during survey" design to estimate the causal effect of the Charlottesville rally on stress about hate crimes. We first show that there was an increase in anti-Black hate crimes in the 2 weeks following the Charlottesville incident. We also find a corresponding increase in stress due to the perception of personal vulnerability to hate crimes among African-Americans. However, we do not observe a significant increase in levels of stress following the trigger event among Hispanics and Asian Americans. Our results suggest that highly publicized instances of intergroup violence can have significant impacts on stress about hate crime victimization within the target group. However, we find that this effect is short-lived, and that both violent aftershocks and the general climate of fear spurred by hate crimes may be racially bounded.

This article considers the implementation of police hate crime policy. Victoria, a state in Australia, provides a case study of a jurisdiction where police have introduced a Prejudice Motivated Crime Strategy without an animating hate crime offence. The article identifies the organisational, relational and operational challenges and opportunities that arise in the implementation of this strategy. The literature reveals that successfully policing hate crime is impeded where the approach to defining and categorising hate crime is over- or under-inclusive. Over-inclusive approaches focus on community expectations while under-inclusive approaches are oriented towards prosecution. The absence of a legally bounded definition of hate crime in Victoria provides an opportunity to develop an approach that meets public expectations and operational needs of police, thus avoiding the pitfalls of over- or under-inclusive approaches. To realise this opportunity, the article draws upon the results of a research partnership between Victoria Police and a consortium of Australian universities. Synthesising legal standards with community interests, a set of five markers are advanced for frontline officers to negotiate, rather than assume, a common understanding of hate crime and to build police/community trust. The article makes an important contribution to the field by demonstrating that it is possible to advance the implementation of hate crime policy through strategies that are responsive to both legal standards and community expectations.