Search results

This paper aims to provide an overview of South African perspectives on preventing, monitoring and combating hate victimisation, towards informing international understandings.

Using a general review approach, this paper provides a historical examination of measures proposed by the South African Government and civil society since 1994, to prevent, monitor and combat hate crime, hate speech and intentional unfair discrimination.

Regardless of a constitutional commitment to social inclusion, diversity and minority rights, significant progress remains lacking after almost three decades of related advocacy, lobbying and limited government intervention. Findings of the South African Hate Crimes Working Group (HCWG) longitudinal Monitoring Project emphasise the need for decisive legal responses to hate victimisation.

A Bill, recognising hate crime and hate speech as distinct criminal offences, has been in development for almost 15 years and will soon serve before Parliament. Enactment of this legislation will be ground-breaking in Africa.

This paper contributes to the field of hate studies by providing an overview of the journey towards current conceptual understandings of hate in (South) Africa. It sets the stage for evaluating the potential of the redesigned HCWG monitoring tool, which holds promise for early identification and intervention in hate hotspots and targeted sectors. This instrument can establish trends not only in South Africa but also across the African continent.

South Africa attained democracy over 24 years ago. The changes in South Africa's Constitution allowed for protection for all citizens. Despite these freedoms and the promise of change, the country is plagued by violence, corruption and crime. These crimes affect the LGBTQ+ people of the South African population. These citizens have been protected by the Constitution; however, they continue to live their lives in a paradox, between protection and prejudice. LGBTQ+ people experience high levels of hate crimes which extend to violence, assault, bullying and cyberbullying. This chapter focuses on the legal protection and challenges experienced by South African LGBTQ+ people.

Disabled women are reported to be between twice and five times more likely to experience sexual violence than non-disabled women or disabled men; when these are hate crimes they compound harms for both victims and communities.

This user-led research explores how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors most effectively resist the harm and injustice they experience after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape.

Feminist standpoint methods are employed with reciprocity as central. This small-scale peer research was undertaken with University ethics and supervision over a five year period. Subjects (n=522) consisted of disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors in North of England.

The intersectional nature of violence against disabled women unsettles constructed macro binaries of public/private space violence and the location of disabled women as inherently vulnerable. Findings demonstrate how seizing collective identity can usefully resist re-victimization, tackle the harms after disablist hate crime involving rape and resist the homogenization of both women and disabled people.

The chapter outlines inequalities in disabled people’s human rights and recommends service and policy improvements, as well as informing methods for conducting ethical research.

This is perhaps the first user-led, social model based feminist standpoint research to explore the collective resistance to harm after experiencing disablist hate crime involving rape. It crossed impairment boundaries and included community living, segregated institutions and women who rely on perpetrators for personal assistance. It offers new evidence of how disabled and Deaf victims and Survivors can collectively unsettle the harms of disablist hate crime and rape and achieve justice and safety on a micro level.

The 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.

The 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.

All 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.

This 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.

If further research works were to confirm these findings, there are implications for police training, officer welfare and support, supervision and leadership.

The 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.

In England and Wales, legislation pertaining to hate crime recognizes hostility based on racial identity, religious affiliation, sexual orientation, disability or transgender identity. Discussions abound as to whether this legislation should also recognize hostility based on gender or misogyny. Taking a socio-legal analysis, the chapter examines hate crime, gender-based victimization and misogyny alongside the impact of victim identity construction, access to justice and the international nature of gendered harm. The chapter provides a comprehensive investigation of gender-based victimization in relation to targeted hostility to assess the potential for its inclusion in hate crime legislation in England and Wales.

This article considers the experiences of people with learning difficulties as victims of hate crime. It considers how the Crime and Disorder Act and No Secrets can help identify and prevent hate crime, and examines an example of good practice designed to produce an effective response.

This paper aims to examine the extent to which police services are set up to deal with hate crime against people with learning disabilities; looking at infrastructure, policies, procedures and levels of awareness and understanding.

Semi‐structured interviews were conducted with representatives from 14 police services in England. Key documents submitted by the police services were reviewed, and a focus group with eight people with learning disabilities was conducted.

Many police services are committed to tackling hate crime against people with learning disabilities. A wide variety of individuals have responsibility for dealing with hate crime and accountability structures are often unclear. Many services do not have hate crime policies that deal specifically with people with learning disabilities, or even disabled people in general. More training is required to ensure relevant staff are equipped to deal with the issues. Hate crime statistics are regarded as unreliable due to significant under‐reporting, although a few services have implemented innovative interventions to encourage reporting through awareness‐raising and multi‐agency working.

The Coalition Government has called for greater efforts at combating disability hate crime. It is widely acknowledged that the police are still failing disabled victims and witnesses. This paper identifies specific areas for improvement as well as innovative and effective practice that should be shared more widely.

There has been an increase in the use of registers and record linkages to study migrant mental health. However, the accuracy of these registers and the degree to which they are representative of the migrant population in Northern Ireland (NI) are unclear. The purpose of this paper is to explore: the coverage of the NI migrant population in general practitioner (GP) data and Census records; the issues faced by migrants in terms of registering and accessing the local health system; and the reporting of racial hate crimes against migrants to police.

Two focus groups of professionals (n=17) who worked with migrants were conducted. Group discussions were guided by a research-informed topic guide, and the data were analysed using thematic analysis.

Three main themes emerged: issues with the use of GP registration, Census and hate crime data for researching migrant mental health; barriers to health service use (e.g. low cultural awareness among health staff and access to interpreters); and risk factor exposure and mental health status in migrant communities (e.g. poverty, isolation and poor working conditions).

Record linkage and registry studies of migrant health and well-being using Census and health service sources need to be mindful of the likelihood that some migrants may be missed. The possible underrepresentation of migrants in health registers may be explained by reduced use of such services which may be caused my encountering staff with limited cultural competency and the inability to access an interpreter promptly.

This paper examines the conditions under which states include sexual orientation as a protected status in hate crime policy over the course of 25 years. Previous research in this area has generally focused on the passage of either general hate crime statutes longitudinally or the inclusion of sexual orientation in hate crime legislation via cross-sectional analysis. Moreover, previous work in this area tends to concentrate on two types of factors affecting policy passage: (1) structural factors such as social disorganization and economic vitality, and (2) political characteristics including governor’s political party and the makeup of the state legislature. We argue that a strong LGBT social movement organizational presence may also influence LGBT hate crime policy passage. Using an event history analysis, we test how state-level social movement organizational mobilization, as well as the state-level political context, affect policy passage from 1983 to 2008. Our findings indicate that political opportunities, including political instability and government ideology, matter for the passage of anti-gay hate crime policy. We also find evidence to support political mediation, as the interaction between social movement organizational presence and Democrats in the state legislature affect policy passage.