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The Stephen Lawrence Inquiry Report was published in 1999. This article reviews the impact of the Report on agency responses to racially motivated crime and hate crime over the last ten years. While there have been improvements arising from implementation of the Report's recommendations, there have equally been unintended outcomes, including: compliance with the Report as a superficial measure of performance; media ridicule of its underlying principles; and unanticipated inversions of the common pattern of white perpetrators and black and minority ethnic (BME) victims. In order to do justice to the tenets of the Report, agencies need to fully understand its intent and locate the tackling of racially motivated crime and hate crime within a broader social justice agenda.

Purpose – To describe and critique the extent and nature of data collection in European Union (EU) Member States on immigrants as victims of crime, and to contextualise this situation with regard to wider debates concerning the EU's ‘migration–crime–security’ nexus that focuses on immigrants as a crime problem. To explain differences in data collection practices between Member States, and to introduce innovative research by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA) that sets out to collect comparative EU-wide data on immigrants’ experiences as victims of crime.

Methodology – A range of material from academic and policy sources, together with the author's own work for an EU Agency, is drawn on to inform about the evidence and debates forwarded in this paper.

Findings – There is a serious lack of comprehensive and timely data on immigrants as victims of crime throughout much of the EU. Hence, there is a need for enhanced data collection at Member State and EU levels that can be used to inform policymakers and other stakeholders about the ‘true’ extent of crime against immigrants and how to address it.

Value – This paper addresses the under-researched theme of immigrants as victims of crime in the EU. It also introduces the reader to ‘EU-MIDIS’ – the first comparative EU-wide survey on selected immigrant groups’ experiences as victims of crime, which is undertaken by the EU's FRA.

Purpose – This paper summarises what is known about the victimisation of immigrants in Australia.

Methodology – A review of the literature.

Findings – Immigrants in Australia appear to be less victimised than natives. However, this may be an unwillingness of report victimisations and/or not defining certain events as victimisations. Immigrants are more likely than natives to perceive their victimisations as racially motivated and they experience higher levels of fear of crime.

Value – This paper provides a succinct look at the experiences of immigrants based upon the findings of victimisation surveys in Australia.

In political and academic discourses and policy and practical interventions, the notion of community safety as it applies to the Black community in its own right is seemingly marginalised. This paper aims to demonstrate that this situation in issues of Black community safety owes a great deal to the tradition of discursive, policy and practical portrayals of the Black community as the threat to the Other1 rather than the victim or potential victim of threat from the Other.

Purpose – The overall purpose of this chapter is to discuss what is known about serious forms of bias violence, obstacles to studying bias violence, and how alternative theoretical and methodological approaches can advance our understanding of bias violence in the twenty-first century.

Design/methodology/approach – Following a review of the literature, the applicability of identity fusion theory for explaining bias violence is considered and applied to the anti-racial mass shooting at an historically Black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Data come from an innovative open-source project known as the United States Extremist Crime Database.

Findings – Drawing from identity fusion theory, information from open-source data on the Charleston church shooting suggests that the perpetrator was a highly fused individual who perceived African Americans as a threat toward his social identity group and committed an act of extreme behavior (i.e., bias homicide) as a means for stabilizing his self-views.

Originality/value – This chapter builds upon prior studies of bias violence by demonstrating how (1) publicly available open sources (e.g., court documents and media reports) may be systematically compiled and used as reliable data for studying serious forms of bias violence, and (2) the use of social psychological theories, specifically identity fusion theory, can help to explain the role of personal and group identities in discriminatory violence.

For more than a decade, public opinion polls have shown that nearly 80% of Americans support hate crime legislation as a response to violence committed because of the victim's race, color, religion, and sexual orientation. Americans' widespread support for legislation aimed at bias-motivated crimes is not matched by the federal and state efforts devoted to responding to such crimes. This chapter describes the myriad factors contributing to America's limited police and prosecutorial response to hate crimes. After a discussion of the patchwork of state and federal legislation aimed at hate crimes, the chapter analyzes the substantial legislative and administrative structures that hamper the enforcement of hate crime law in the United States.

The paper's aim is to examine whether there is a causal link between “race” hate, particularly Islamophobia (defined as anti‐Muslim feeling and violence based on “race” and/or religion), and media treatment of Muslim communities in Britain in recent years.

The paper looks at the reporting of terror activities and examines the way the media (tabloid press) constructs racists news.

The article discusses some of the themes developed in a previous paper that looked at government policy towards Muslim communities by examining the media campaign directed against Muslims within this broader political context. The implications for the cultivation of “race” hate are considered.

The paper demonstrates that “race” hate and routine attacks on Muslim communities appear to be increasing and needs to be addressed by developing strategies that are inclusive of all disadvantaged communities, racism, “war on terror”, working class.

The paper adds to the literature on “race” hate by examining these theories in the light of recent and ongoing terror attacks and their impact on Muslim communities in Britain.

This chapter examines jury nullification, through which American juries refuse to convict criminal defendants in the face of overwhelming evidence of guilt to express disapproval of specific criminal laws or of their application to particular defendants, through the political theory of Carl Schmitt. It distinguishes liberal components of American jurisprudence, especially the rule of law, from democratic sovereignty, and shows how the two are in deep tension with one another. In light of this tension it argues that jury nullification amounts to democratic sovereignty applied counter to the liberal state in a way that paradoxically upholds individual liberty.

Purpose – To assess the role of hate crime legislation in protecting immigrants and winning their hearts; and to determine whether hate crime is increasing with immigration and, if not, why.

Methodology – Based on a survey of the literature, a search of news reports in a special interest news clipping service related to immigrants, and the analysis of US National and California hate crime data.

Findings – Immigration does not appear to be associated with increasing hate crime against immigrants in general or Hispanic immigrants in particular in the United States. This may be because immigrants, particularly Hispanic immigrants, tend to live in residentially segregated conditions. However, for people who are probably Middle Eastern–appearing immigrants, the data show a spike in attacks in the years after the September 11 atrocity. The police and prosecutors often decline to arrest and/or to prosecute as hate crimes matters that appear to be hate crimes. This alienates immigrants and makes them believe the opposite of what the proponents of hate legislation would hope. Hate crime legislation does not seem to be to the advantage of immigrants.

Value – This is an empirically based assessment of the value of hate crime legislation for the protection, winning, and integration of immigrants.

This article documents instances of racism that have previously acted as barriers to Indian students' academic success in Australia. It is felt that such incidents would not have happened to students from, for example, China or Japan, as their governments would have taken more serious steps against the Australian government. There is a feeling in India that the Indian government can be seen as weak. Against this background, the article looks at potential reasons for racially motivated attacks against Indians in Australia, and at what can be done to reduce these, as well as both the Australian and Indian government responses to the particular instances reported.