Search

While Canada proclaims itself to be among the most diverse and inclusive nations, the persistence of hate crime challenges this vision. The “myth of multiculturalism” is laid bare by exclusionary acts of harassment and violence. This article traces the tropes of multiculturalism before assessing the ways in which bias-motivated violence reveals the fissures in this facade. Optimistically, however, it concludes with a consideration of the unintended constructive impacts of ongoing patterns of hostility. That is, the rhetoric of multiculturalism still has some capacity to provide a foundation for critical discourse inspired by victimization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How a neighborhood responds to a hate crime is important for combatting these wrongdoings. Since these acts are often proxies for power dynamics involving the “superior” perpetrator controlling the “inferior” victim, effective responses from the victim’s community are essential. However, these same communities, especially poor minority ones, are often socially disorganized and find it challenging to address the complex problems that stem from poverty. This exploratory study observes how a Cape Verdean community in the Northeast responded to racially motivated hate crimes that occurred there. Using the theoretical framework of social disorganization theory, social cohesion, and collective efficacy, the central questions asked in this study are the following: How did this community respond to these crimes? To what extent did social cohesion and collective efficacy shape its response? Interviews of community leaders were conducted to answer these questions. Results indicate that despite social cohesion on some levels, the lack of collective efficacy prevented the Cape Verdean community from articulating and implementing a strong response to these hate crimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the last 150 years, New York's remarkable diversity has been both a blessing and a challenge to its police force and its citizens. With the city more populated and diverse than ever, one might expect crime and intergroup conflict to be rampant, when in fact the opposite is true. Although New York is not quite Utopia, the New York Police Department's (NYPD) impressive multiyear effort at combating crime and hate crime in particular has created a noticeably safer and more civil city. Data show that after the state passed new legislation and the NYPD increased support for its Hate Crime Task Force, hate crime in the city dropped dramatically—an important lesson for other cities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stereotypes and hate crimes are complex issues. Stereotypes usually have three dimensions—Evaluation or valence, Potency, and Accuracy (EPA). According to the EPA model of stereotypes and stereotyping, negative and inaccurate stereotypes are more prone to bias and prejudice. This article uses the EPA model to test two assumptions. First, stereotypes would produce a differential impact on Asian Americans, which is contingent on the accuracy and valence of stereotypes to Asian Americans. Inaccurate negative stereotypes may offend Asian Americans more than accurate negative stereotypes. Second, Asian Americans may be more sensitive or responsive to a hate crime situation in which Asian Americans are racially targeted as the only victims than to one in which both Asian Americans and other minority Americans are racially targeted as victims together. The results from the two studies strongly corroborate these two assumptions, which provide more support for the EPA model of stereotypes and stereotyping. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its significance as a specific category of hate crime, anti-Jewish crime has received little attention in the scholarly literature on policing hate crime. Whereas hate crimes against Jews figure prominently in the annual hate crime statistics published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in the United States, there are no routinely published police data on anti-Jewish incidents in the United Kingdom. Given the concerns about a rise in anti-Semitism in Britain in recent years, this article expands on written and oral testimony provided by the author to the All-Party Parliamentary Inquiry Into Anti-Semitism. It illuminates the inadequacies in the police monitoring of, and use of data on, anti-Jewish incidents and discusses the shortcomings in the context of the value of hate crime data for police services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the conditions under which a crime committed by a teenager comes to be viewed as a hate-motivated offense. In Study 1, the age of the perpetrator and the level of evidence were experimentally manipulated for male and female subjects. The dependent variable consisted of the likelihood that an interracial encounter was a hate crime. Our results suggest that female subjects were significantly more likely than their male counterparts to view the offense as a hate crime. In addition, we found significant differences in the influence of various forms of evidence. The difference was nonsignificant between the teenage and adult offenders. In Study 2, we content analyzed hate crime prosecutions as reported in major newspapers. Surprisingly, our results indicate that many teens were prosecuted and convicted on a hate crime charge. Studies 1 and 2 collectively suggest that teenage hate crime defendants are no longer the recipients of lenient treatment by the courts or in the court of public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the bomb attacks that occurred in London on July 7, 2005, hate and faith-hate crimes and other incidents have become a major focus of the police and government in the United Kingdom. This article presents some of the research that has taken place on the nature and policing of hate crime over the past 5 years in the London Metropolitan Police Service. Focusing in particular on recent research into anti-Semitism where a new typology of incidents has been developed, the article reveals that the majority of hate incidents reported to the police in London are perpetrated by people with whom victims come into contact in their daily lives, rather than predominantly by strangers or extremists. This provides the police with a number of challenges for both strategic thinking and operational practice. It also highlights the continual need for close liaison and consultation with minority communities and vulnerable groups within London. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years, the British, German, and French states have increasingly turned their attention to the problem of racist violence. Yet in spite of their common participation in the European Union, each country has pursued a distinctive path in response to such hate crimes. Britain has focused primarily on policing and on the judicial process for prosecuting racially aggravated offenses, Germany has devoted substantial resources to civil society groups dedicated to countering right-wing extremism, and France has taken high-profile symbolic actions and has begun adapting its educational policies to address racist violence. This article argues that developing effective policies depends on learning best practices from other states but that it also requires being responsive to the concerns of domestic actors who face specific problems and who suggest possible solutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]