Lecture - Responding to hate - Genocide Emphasis

Responding to Hate

Overview of Lecture

  • Discuss the contested nature of ‘hate’.

  • Identify the legal backdrop that creates hate crimes.

  • Problematise current hate crime frameworks.

  • Explore how hate is responded to.

  • Discuss extreme ends of hate, such as genocide.

Self-Care

  • Importance of self-care when dealing with issues related to hate and violence.

Identity-Based Violence

  • Historical Context: Violence and wars have been waged against competing identities such as nationhood, religion, gender, race, and political affiliation.

  • Sociality of Personhood: Engagement in a sense of belonging or not belonging based on identity.

  • In Groups vs. Out Groups: The phenomenon of othering identities.

  • Spectrum of Violence: Includes historic territorial conflicts, the Jewish Holocaust, colonisation, and the Christianisation of indigenous populations.

Scholarly Discourses

  • Contest of Hate: Some scholars prefer 'bias' to explain the spectrum of motivations.

    • Sheffield (1995): Hate violence is motivated by socio-political factors and legitimised by belief systems, reflecting political culture and social stratification.

    • Perry (2001): Hate crime asserts the offender’s identity and power over others.

    • Iganski (2001): Waves of harm model illustrates that hate crime extends harm beyond the individual victim to the broader community.

    • Mason (2007): Hate crime serves as a moral claim against prejudice, advocating for tolerance and respect.

Hate Crime Legislation

  • Definition of Hate Crime: A modern category describing a type of interpersonal violence.

  • Understanding from NPCC and CPS: Any criminal offense perceived as motivated by hostility or prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, or transgender identity (CPS, 2019).

  • Legal Frameworks:

    • Crime and Disorder Act (1999) and Race Relations Acts (1965, 1976): Protections evolved to include incitement to religious hatred post-2006.

    • Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act (2003): Affords enhanced legal protections against violence towards protected strands.

  • Neglect of structural violence, discrimination, and inequality in practice.

  • Sentencing uplift for hate crimes justified by Iganski and Lagou (2015) based on the greater harm caused.

Responding to Hate

  • Role of Police: They are responsible for recording hate offenses and implementing legislation; considered the 'ground troops of justice'.

  • Trust Issues: Minorities often display significant distrust towards police due to historical and contemporary contexts (Chakraborti and Garland, 2015).

  • Solutions for Effective Reporting:

    • Liaison officers (Pickles, 2020).

    • Third-party reporting sites (Fitch-Bartlett & Healy, 2022).

    • Community workers (Pickles, 2021).

  • Building positive relationships is key to successful hate crime recording and prosecution.

  • Community mechanisms for reporting and sharing information (Gatehouse et al., 2018; Pickles, 2019).

Criminal or Social Justice?

  • Perry (2001): Hate crime is a mechanism of power and oppression, reinforcing social hierarchies.

  • Historical Context of Violence: Acknowledgement of interconnected histories of racial othering and dehumanization across different ethnic groups, as expressed through personal narratives (Khosravi, 2010).

Israel and Palestine

  • Examination of the collapse of international law and the cyclical nature of hate.

  • Exploring possibilities of responding to hate through dialogue and love, and opportunities for healing.

  • Highlighting the importance of listening to those affected by genocidal acts.

References

  • Awan, I. & Zempi, I. (2020). 'You all look the same': Non-Muslim men who suffer Islamophobic hate crime in the post-Brexit era. European Journal of Criminology, 17(5): 585-602.

  • Campbell, R. (2015). Not getting away with it: linking sex work and hate crime in Merseyside. In Neil Chakraborti and Jon Garland (eds.). Responding to Hate Crime: The case for connecting policy and research.

  • College of Policing (2020). Major investigation and public protection: Responding to non-crime hate incidents. [Online] available at: https://www.app.college.police.uk/app-content/major-investigation-and-public-protection/hate-crime/responding-to-non-crime-hate-incidents/ (accessed 12 October 2021).

  • Chakraborti, N. & Garland, J. (2012). Reconceptualizing hate crime victimization through the lens of vulnerability and ‘difference’. Theoretical Criminology, 16(4): 499-514.

  • Iganski, P. & Lagou, S. (2015). Hate Crimes Hurt Some More Than Others: Implications for the Just Sentencing of Offenders. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 30(10): 1696-1718.

  • Khosravi, S. (2010). 'Illegal' Traveller: An Auto-Ethnography of Borders. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

  • Mason, G. (2007). Hate crime as a moral category: Lessons from the Snowtown case. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Criminology, 40(3): 249-271.