Blood, Threats and Fears: The Hidden Worlds of Hate Crime Victims

By Stevie-Jade Hardy and Neil Chakraborti

This book offers unparalleled insight into the ways in which hate crime affects individuals and communities across the world. Drawing from the testimonies of more than 2,000 victims of hate crime, the book identifies the physical, emotional and community-level harms associated with hate crimes and key implications for justice in the context of punitive, restorative, rehabilitative and educative interventions. Hate crime constitutes one of the biggest global challenges of our time and blights the lives of millions of people across the world. Within this context the book generates important new knowledge on victims’ experiences and expectations, and uses its compelling evidence-base to identify fresh ways of understanding, researching and responding to hate crime. It also documents the sensitivities associated with undertaking complex fieldwork of this nature, and in doing so offers an authentic account of the very necessary – and sometimes unconventional – steps which are fundamentalto the process of engaging with ‘hard-to-reach’ communities. 

• Language: English
• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Release date: Nov 23, 2019
• ISBN: 9783030319977

Book preview

Part ISetting the Scene

© The Author(s) 2020

S.-J. Hardy, N. ChakrabortiBlood, Threats and FearsPalgrave Hate Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31997-7_1

1. Increasing Problems, Increasing Indifference

Stevie-Jade Hardy¹   and Neil Chakraborti¹  

(1)

School of Criminology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Stevie-Jade Hardy (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Neil Chakraborti

Email: [e-mail]

Abstract

This chapter highlights the originality, significance and need for this book by referring to the rising levels of hate and extremism both online and offline, the physical, emotional and community-level harms associated with hate crimes, and to the growing scepticism towards the concept of hate crime and ignorance of the harms associated with it.

Keywords

Hate crimeExtremismVictimsPerpetrators

Hate crime constitutes one of the biggest global challenges of our time and blights the lives of millions of people across the world. The term ‘hate crime’ has been used within the domains of policy and scholarship as a way of distinguishing those forms of violence and micro-aggressions which are directed towards people on the basis of their identity, ‘difference’ or perceived vulnerability. The coining of a collective descriptor for these forms of victimisation has acted as a catalyst for improved awareness, understanding and responses amongst a range of different actors including lawmakers, non-governmental organisations, activists and professionals within and beyond the criminal justice sector. Importantly, it has facilitated increased prioritisation across disciplines, across communities and across borders.

The need for such prioritisation has become all the more urgent amidst a context of rising levels of hate and extremism. As stated by Commissioner Věra Jourová at the Launch of the EU High Level Group on combating racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance in 2016:

Over recent years, racism, xenophobia and other forms of intolerance have been growing and spreading across Europe at very high speed … there is also an exponential spread of hate speech on online fora, including social media and chats.

Within the United Kingdom (UK), 103,379 hate crimes were recorded by the police in England and Wales in 2018/19, which was not only an increase of 10 per cent compared to the previous year but it was also a continuation of an upward trend since 2012/13, with recorded hate crime having more than doubled in that time frame (Home Office 2019). While this rise is likely to be the result of a culmination of factors—including increased reporting and improved recording—‘trigger’ events of local, national and international significance have influenced the prevalence and severity of hate-fuelled violence and micro-aggressions (Littler and Feldman 2015; Hanes and Machin 2014; King and Sutton 2014). For instance, the EU referendum result of June 2016 led to an upsurge in reports of hate crime with more than 14,000 recorded by police forces in England and Wales between July and September 2016, which amounted to record levels of hate crime for three-quarters of police forces (Home Office 2018). ‘Trigger’ events such as the EU referendum also lead to a proliferation of hate online (Awan and Zempi 2017; Burch 2017; Williams and Burnap 2015), with social media ‘acting as a force-amplifier for cyberhate as it can open up a potential space for the rapid galvanising and spread of hostile beliefs, via the spread of rumours through online contagion’ (Williams and Pearson 2016: 7).

Equally worrying spikes in hate crime have been observed further afield, including escalating tensions during and after the 2016 presidential campaign within the United States of America (USA) (Human Rights Watch 2019; Southern Poverty Law Centre 2016). In the ten days following the election of Donald Trump, 867 hate crimes were reported to the Southern Poverty Law Centre (SPLC), many of which were targeted towards ethnic and religious minority groups, thereby emulating the hostile and degrading discourse espoused by Trump during the election campaign (ibid., 2016). Populist parties have also experienced success across Europe, with othering, xenophobia and scapegoating permeating the political landscape in countries such as Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Holland, Hungary, Italy, Norway, Poland, Slovenia and Sweden (Human Rights Watch 2019; Dearden 2017; Lazaridis et al. 2016). Similar to the presidential election in the USA and the EU Referendum in the UK, these narratives have fermented a fertile environment for the commission of hate crime, as exemplified by substantial increases in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crime in France, a rise in targeted violence towards refugees and refugee shelters in Germany and Greece, and a sharp increase in racist hate crime towards immigrants, minority ethnic and Roma communities in Italy and Hungary (Human Rights Watch 2019).

The growth of hate and extremism in online and offline environments paints a worrying picture, not least because of the considerable damage they are known to cause. On an individual level, hate crime has been found to have a more harmful effect upon a victim’s emotional and physical well-being when compared to non-hate motivated crimes (Paterson et al. 2019; Vedeler et al. 2019; Iganski and Lagou 2015). According to the 2015/16 and 2017/18 Crime Survey for England and Wales, hate crime victims are more likely than victims of crime overall to cite being emotionally affected by the incident (89 per cent and 77 per cent respectively) and more likely to be ‘very much’ affected (36 per cent and 13 per cent, respectively) (Home Office 2018). Additionally, hate crime victims are more than twice as likely to have experienced a loss of confidence, difficulty sleeping, anxiety, panic attacks and depression when compared with victims of crime overall (Home Office 2018). The implications of suffering mental ill-health are far-reaching, often resulting in a decline in physical health, educational achievement and work productivity.

It is also now widely acknowledged that the impacts of hate crime extend well beyond the actual victim, transmitting a sense of apprehension and vulnerability amongst family and community members (Walters et al. 2019; Bell and Perry 2015; Perry and Alvi 2012). As found in research by Paterson et al. (2019), knowing someone whom you share an identity or lifestyle characteristic with and who has been subjected to hate crime can also lead to indirect impacts such as an escalation in feelings of fear, anger and shame, and changes to everyday practices. Both directly and indirectly, hate-fuelled violence and micro-aggressions have the propensity to reinforce long-standing social divisions, a situation which is compounded further by those who seek to exploit these fractures to advance a particular ideology or to legitimise hateful and extremist views (Greater Manchester Preventing Hateful Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion Commission 2018; Casey 2016).

The originality, significance and need for this book become all the more evident at a time when scepticism towards the concept of hate crime and ignorance of the harms associated with it are becoming ever more palpable. As illustrated by the quotation below, attempts to devalue, disparage and deny the pervasiveness of hate crime not only reinforce the sense of isolation and marginalisation felt by many hate crime victims but also seek to silence their voices and to invalidate their experiences.

Britain is in the grip of an epidemic, apparently. An epidemic of hate. Barely a day passes without some policeman or journalist telling us about the wave of criminal bigotry that is sweeping through the country … what the BBC calls an ‘epidemic’ is a product of the authorities redefining racism and prejudice to such an extent that almost any unpleasant encounter between people of different backgrounds can now be recorded as ‘hatred’ … According to one leftie online magazine, Britain now evokes ‘nightmares of 1930s Germany’. But this doesn’t square with the reality of our country today, and you shouldn’t believe it. The hate-crime epidemic is a self-sustaining myth — a libel against the nation.

(O’Neill 2016)

To be honest the term hate crime was cooked up by the extreme Left as a whip to crack over white British heterosexual Christians, and it’s just another way of gagging free speech. If you call someone a twat, a bastard or a wanker it’s no big deal, people can brush it off, so why is it different if you call someone a nigger, a poof or a whore?

Message received by the authors via Facebook

The prevailing shallow, repetitive cycle which sees leading figures simply condemn hate crimes as ‘utterly unacceptable’ and as ‘having no place in our society’, to coin recent phrases used by the then Home Secretary Amber Rudd, does little to stem this growing tide of cynicism (Home Office 2016: 5). After having spent more than fifteen years investigating this phenomenon and hearing from thousands of hate crime victims, many of whom are living in despair, scared to do their weekly shop, to drop their children at school or to catch a bus, we felt compelled to write this book to show that hate crime is a very-real, repetitive and damaging problem. Without urgent action, hate crime victims will continue to encounter violence and micro-aggressions; to be met with incredulity and apathy; to reject opportunities to report their experiences; to become increasingly detached from support structures; and to have little faith in criminal justice responses.

This book draws from a series of empirical research studies which have generated testimonies from more than 2000 victims of hate crime who come from different backgrounds and who are based within different parts of the UK. These testimonies offer unparalleled insights which transform our understanding of the ways in which victims experience and respond to hate incidents; the physical, emotional and community-level harms associated with hate crimes; and the implications for justice in the context of punitive, restorative, rehabilitative and educative interventions. In addition to generating new knowledge on victim experiences and expectations, the book is designed to shape innovation in hate crime research methodology and policy formation. We document the sensitivities, subjectivities and practicalities associated with undertaking complex research of this nature. In doing so, we offer an authentic account of the very necessary—and sometimes unconventional—steps which are fundamental to the process of engaging with ‘hard-to-reach’ groups and undertaking harrowing fieldwork. We also give specific focus to the policy implications of our research in highlighting ways to generate improved responses to hate crime from within the spheres of criminal justice, health, social care and education.

References

Awan, I., & Zempi, I. (2017). ‘I will blow your face off’: Virtual and physical world anti-Muslim hate crime. British Journal of Criminology,57(2), 362–380.

Bell, J. G., & Perry, B. (2015). Outside looking in: The community impacts of anti-lesbian, gay, and bisexual hate crime. Journal of Homosexuality, 62(1), 98–120.

Burch, L. (2017). ‘You are a parasite on the productive classes’: Online disablist hate speech in austere times. Disability & Society,33(3), 392–415.Crossref

Casey, L. (2016). The Casey Review: A review into opportunity and integration. London: Department for Communities and Local Government.

Dearden, L. (2017). Attacks on refugee homes double in Austria as accommodation firebombed and sprayed with Nazi graffiti. http://​www.​independent.​co.​uk/​news/​world/​europe/​refugee-crisis-austria-migrants-asylum-seekers-homes-attacksfirebombi​ngs-doubles-accomodation-a7661831.​html.

Greater Manchester Preventing Hateful Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion Commission. (2018). A shared future. Manchester: Greater Manchester Preventing Hateful Extremism and Promoting Social Cohesion Commission. https://​www.​greatermancheste​r-ca.​gov.​uk/​media/​1170/​preventing-hateful-extremism-and-promoting-social-cohesion-report.​pdf.

Hanes, E., & Machin, S. (2014). Hate crime in the wake of terror attacks: Evidence from 7/7 and 9/11. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice,30(3), 247–267.Crossref

Home Office. (2016). Action against hate: The UK Government’s plan for tackling hate crime. London: Home Office.

Home Office. (2018). Hate crime, England and Wales, 2017/18. London: Home Office.

Home Office. (2019). Hate crime, England and Wales, 2018/19. London: Home Office.

Human Rights Watch. (2019). World report 2019. New York: Human Rights Watch.

Iganski, P., & Lagou, S. (2015). The personal injuries of ‘hate crime’. In N. Hall, A. Corb, P. Giannasi, & J. G. D. Grieve (Eds.), The Routledge international handbook on hate crime (pp. 34–46). London: Routledge.

King, R. D., & Sutton, G. M. (2014). High times for hate crimes: Explaining the temporal clustering of hate motivated offending. Criminology,51, 871–894.Crossref

Lazaridis, G., Campani, G., & Benveniste, A. (2016). The rise of the far right in Europe: Populist shifts and ‘othering’. London: Palgrave.Crossref

Littler, M., & Feldman, M. (2015). Tell MAMA reporting 2014/2015: Annual monitoring, cumulative extremism, and policy implications. Teesside: Teesside University Press.

O’Neill, B. (2016). Britain’s real hate crime scandal.https://​www.​spectator.​co.​uk/​2016/​08/​the-real-hate-crime-scandal/​.

Paterson, J. L., Brown, R., & Walters, M. A. (2019). Feeling for and as a group member: Understanding LGBT victimization via group-based empathy and intergroup emotions. British Journal of Social Psychology,58(1), 211–224.Crossref

Perry, B., & Alvi, S. (2012). ‘We are all vulnerable’: The in terrorem effects of hate crimes. International Review of Victimology,18(1), 57–71.Crossref

Southern Poverty Law Centre. (2016). The Trump effect: The impact of the 2016 presidential election on our nation’s schools. https://​www.​splcenter.​org/​20161128/​trump-effectimpact-2016-presidential-election-our-nations-schools.

Vedeler, J. S., Olsen, T., & Eriksen, J. (2019). Hate speech harms: A social justice discussion of disabled Norwegians’ experiences. Disability & Society,34(3), 368–383.Crossref

Walters, M. A., Paterson, J., McDonnell, L., & Brown, R. (2019). Group identity, empathy and shared suffering: Understanding the ‘community’ impacts of anti-LGBT and Islamophobic hate crimes. International Review of Victimology. https://​journals.​sagepub.​com/​doi/​full/​10.​1177/​0269758019833284​.

Williams, M., & Burnap, P. (2015). Cyberhate on social media in the aftermath of Woolwich: A case study in computational criminology and big data. British Journal of Criminology,56(2), 211–238.Crossref

Williams, M., & Pearson, O. (2016). Hate crime and bullying in the age of social media. https://​orca-mwe.​cf.​ac.​uk/​88865/​1/​Cyber-Hate-and-Bullying-Post-Conference-Report_​English_​pdf.​pdf.

© The Author(s) 2020

S.-J. Hardy, N. ChakrabortiBlood, Threats and FearsPalgrave Hate Studieshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-31997-7_2

2. Visible yet Invisible: Challenges Facing Hate Crime Victims

Stevie-Jade Hardy¹   and Neil Chakraborti¹  

(1)

School of Criminology, University of Leicester, Leicester, UK

Stevie-Jade Hardy (Corresponding author)

Email: [e-mail]

Neil Chakraborti

Email: [e-mail]

Abstract

Within this chapter, we illustrate the prima facie contradictory positions in which hate crime victims often find themselves in by being on the one hand all too visible to perpetrators on the basis of their ‘difference’, and yet largely invisible to professionals, mainstream society and policy formation because of the marginal positions which they are seen to occupy. We begin by reflecting upon how the term ‘hate crime’ has been—or perhaps more pertinently how it should be—defined. This discussion is designed to steer readers through some of the main challenges and ambiguities relating to defining ‘hate crime’ and by doing so offers conceptual clarity for the purposes of the chapters which follow.

Keywords

Hate crimeVictimsDifferenceTargeted hostilityPrejudiceIdentity

Within this chapter, we illustrate the prima facie contradictory positions in which hate crime victims often find themselves in by being on the one hand all too visible to perpetrators on the basis of their ‘difference’, and yet largely invisible to professionals, mainstream society and policy formation because of the marginal positions which they are seen to occupy.

We begin by reflecting upon how the term ‘hate crime’ has been—or perhaps more pertinently how it should be—defined. This discussion is designed to steer readers through some of the main challenges and ambiguities relating to defining ‘hate crime’ and by doing so offers conceptual clarity for the purposes of the chapters which follow. It emphasises the need to recognise and to integrate concepts such as ‘difference’ and ‘otherness’ within established frameworks in order to reconfigure a more inclusive concept. As this chapter highlights, visible markers of difference and patterns of economic, structural, political and cultural inequality contribute to certain groups being especially vulnerable to hate crime victimisation. Despite this enhanced risk of victimisation, this chapter demonstrates that by virtue of the multiple and intersecting layers of discrimination encountered by minority groups within the context of education, employment, housing and health, they are often detached from or denied access to policy-making, civic engagement and services. This disempowered position has significant implications for the visibility of hate crime victims within and beyond the criminal justice system and the perceived deservingness of their victim status.

Conceptualising Hate Crime

‘Hate’ is an emotive and conceptually ambiguous label which can mean different things to different people, and this influences the offences which are classified as forms of ‘hate crime’ and for the groups of victims who are offered protection under its umbrella framework. As Chakraborti and Garland (2012: 501) explain, hate crime ‘emerges from a complex network of events, structures and underlying processes, and, as such, will be constructed according to different actors’ perceptions, whether they are scholars, law enforcers or victims’. An array of definitions can be found within the wider body of academic and policy literature, but almost all are consistent in referring to a broader range of factors than hate alone to describe the motivations which underpin hate crime victimisation (see, inter alia, Hall 2013; Gerstenfeld 2013; Petrosino 2003; Jacobs and Potter 1998). In particular, terms such as ‘targeted hostility’, ‘prejudice’, ‘bias’ and ‘intolerance’ have all been used interchangeably by scholars as a way of highlighting that the presence of ‘hate’ itself is not central to the commission of a hate crime.

In the absence of a universal definition, it is Barbara Perry’s (2001) work in this area which has been especially influential upon contemporary interpretations of hate crime. According to Perry (2001: 10):

Hate crime … involves acts of violence and intimidation, usually directed towards already stigmatised and marginalised groups. As such, it is a mechanism of power and oppression, intended to reaffirm the precarious hierarchies that characterise a given social order. It attempts to re-create simultaneously the threatened (real or imagined) hegemony of the perpetrator’s group and the ‘appropriate’ subordinate identity of the victim’s group. It is a means of marking both the Self and the Other in such a way as to re-establish their ‘proper’ relative positions, as given and reproduced by broader ideologies and patterns of social and political inequality.

There are a number of noteworthy elements to this framework which have shaped the way in which hate crimes—and responses to victims—have come to be conceived of with regard to scholarship and policy. Significantly, it highlights the complexity of hate crime by emphasising the relationship between structural hierarchies, institutionalised prejudices and acts of