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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.

Prior analyses of racial bias in the New York City’s Stop-and-Frisk program implicitly assumed that potential bias of police officers did not vary by crime type and that their decision of which type of crime to report as the basis for the stop did not exhibit any bias. In this paper, we first extend the hit rates model to consider crime type heterogeneity in racial bias and police officer decisions of reported crime type. Second, we reevaluate the program while accounting for heterogeneity in bias along crime types and for the sample selection which may arise from conditioning on crime type. We present evidence that differences in biases across crime types are substantial and specification tests support incorporating corrections for selective crime reporting. However, the main findings on racial bias do not differ sharply once accounting for this choice-based selection.

The paper aims to provide a critical review of how variations in the conceptualization and contextualization of hate crime across US cities might impact how their individual law enforcement agencies collect hate crime data. Media reports and political discourses present hate crime as a prevalent problem in the USA. However, this representation of hate crime in the public sphere is not reflected in the relatively low national numbers of hate crimes published annually by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Drawing primarily on the national hate crime data for the period 2008–2018, this author conducted a secondary research study of the concept, context, extent and law enforcement collection of hate crime data in five cities in the USA.

This paper is a product of some of the findings of the study, which include the definition of hate crime at the federal, state and city levels and the contextualization of hate crimes at these levels. The findings show inconsistencies in how the five cities and associated law enforcement agencies conceptualize hate crime and in how they collect and report hate crime data at local and national levels.

Through its analysis of how five US cities and the associated law enforcement agencies interpret and respond to hate crime data collection, with recommendations of best practices for hate crime data collection by law enforcement agencies, the paper contributes to the academic and nonacademic debate on hate crime.

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.

This chapter considers overlapping legal and policy issues related to hate crimes, summarizing the problem with an emphasis on societal responses. The theoretical insight that law can be understood as an expression of societal values is combined with an emphasis on the empirical study of law in action. The approach taken is theoretical and conceptual in nature, but is also informed by relevant case law and various empirical studies and is concerned to suggest how hate crime research can address issues of both theoretical and policy significance by analyzing how hate crime law is practiced. Some of the findings are that hate crime law can be seen to express values in a wide variety of settings and to express values intentionally, neither of which has been properly acknowledged to date. It is important for public policy analysis and practice as well as for theory development to acknowledge the limitations of both rational choice/deterrence approaches and moral education theories in the hate crime policy domain. Instead of understanding criminal law as a type of threat or type of instruction, in the case of hate crimes the law may be practiced and evaluated most realistically without assuming that hate criminals will be attentive to potential legal sanctions or amenable to moral education. The discussion includes elements of literature review, policy debate, theoretical analysis, and methodological reflection suggesting how hate crime law can be analyzed as expressive law in action, providing material relevant for students, theorists, policy-makers and analysts, and researchers.

The paper addresses the issue of contrasting constructions of social problems. Using “hate crime” as an example, we focus on portraits of the problem in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports and in the New York Times. The analysis illumines how fundamental contrasts in representations of hate arise from differences in the underlying, and institutionalized, sense-making practices of scorekeeping and storytelling. We conclude by discussing the larger implications of the findings for further development of the theoretical model of “dialogical constructionism.”

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.

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.

The purpose of this article is to provide a critical account of the hate crime (HC) paradigm by exploring its historical legal definition and the limitations in addressing the multiple and structural discriminations faced by minority groups. Specifically, the article focuses on the case of Italy, where in recent years a fierce debate over a proposed law on HC against LGBT+ and disabled people ended in its rejection due to neoconservative and Catholic opposition.

Drawing on critical socio-criminological literature on HC, the paper analyses the Italian debates and socio-legal context over the past two decades regarding discrimination against LGBT+ groups and its (lack of) criminalization. It also provides a secondary analysis of recent data on violence and discrimination against LGBT+ people, collected by the Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA).

The analysis of the debate and the data collected shows that the criminal definition of HC is insufficient to capture the wider range of social and cultural violence and discrimination against LGBT+ people. Indeed, data analysis shows the effect of the low level of recognition of rights on the propensity of people to denounce and of social practitioners to recognize, discrimination and violence against LGBT+ people. It is therefore argued that the discussion on HC should move beyond the criminalization of individual violence to be entrenched in a broader reflection over the lack of recognition of sexual citizenship rights which perpetuates the vulnerability of LGBT+ people.

This paper contributes to the international socio-criminological debate on HC. It argues for a comprehensive framework that recognizes the structural nature of discrimination and violence against vulnerable groups by framing discrimination and violence against LGBT+ people as a citizenship right rather than a criminal justice issue.