'Hate crime' and the city

Paul Iganski, Iganski, Paul

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN: 9781861349408
• eBook ISBN: 9781447315469
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Criminology
• Index: Social Sciences

The impression often conveyed by the media about hate crime offenders is that they are hate-fuelled individuals who, in acting out their extremely bigoted views, target their victims in premeditated violent attacks. Scholarly research on the perpetrators of hate crime has begun to provide a more nuanced picture. But the preoccupation of researchers with convicted offenders neglects the vast majority of hate crime offenders that do not come into contact with the criminal justice system.

This book, from a leading author in the field, widens understanding of hate crime by demonstrating that many offenders are ordinary people who offend in the context of their everyday lives. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book takes a victim-centred approach to explore and analyse hate crime as a social problem, providing an empirically informed and scholarly perspective. Aimed at academics and students of criminology, sociology and socio-legal studies, the book draws out the connections between the individual agency of offenders and the background structural context for their actions. It adds a new dimension to the debate about criminalising hate in light of concerns about the rise of punitive and expressive justice, scrutinizing the balance struck by hate crime laws between the rights of offenders and the rights of victims.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• ONE: A victim-centred approach to conceptualising ‘hate crime’
• TWO: The normality of everyday ‘hate crime’
• THREE: The spatial dynamics of everyday ‘hate crime’
• FOUR: Tensions in liberalism and the criminalisation of ‘hate’
• FIVE: Including victims of ‘hate crime’ in the criminal justice policy process
• SIX: Conclusions: understanding everyday ‘hate crime’
• Appendix A: The UK’s ‘hate crime’ laws
• Appendix B: The process of ‘hate crime’
• Appendix C: Controversy about the extent of the anti-Muslim backlash following the July 2005 London bombings
• Appendix D: Ethnic group composition of the London boroughs (2001 Census)
• Appendix E: Black and Asian minority ethnic (BME) group population proportions and diversity scores for the London boroughs (1991 and 2001)
• Appendix F: Methodology of the evaluation of the London-wide Race Hate Crime Forum
• References