![]()
PART ONE
Working together: developing shared perspectives
Hate crime is a broad umbrella term that draws focus to the commonalities and distinctions between a diverse range of offences, harms and prejudices. These are complex, multi-layered problems that raise difficult questions for those working within this field. Such problems will invariably be all the more challenging in the context of prevailing economic, social and political factors, whether this be the continued demonisation of âmarginalâ communities, the dwindling opportunities for young people across Europe or the prevailing climate of austerity and spending cuts. With this in mind, a collaborative, joined-up response from policy makers, practitioners, scholars and activists would seem to stand the best chance of addressing the problems posed by hate crime.
Part One gives examples of how collaborative thinking and the development of shared perspectives has facilitated improved work within the field of hate crime. Each chapter is written from a different perspective. Nathan Hall begins with a personalised account, documenting his experiences as an academic venturing into the world of hate crime policy making and illustrating ways in which real and constructed divides between the two domains of academia and policy can be bridged. The next chapter by Paul Giannasi draws from his experiences within the police service to examine the evolving relationship between policing, academia and government within the context of hate crime, and outlines why and how embedded partnerships between policy and scholarship can be mutually beneficial. Chapter Threeâs âin conversationâ piece with Sylvia Lancaster moves on to highlight the value of grassroots campaigning in generating debate about the intolerance of âdifferenceâ, in empowering targets of prejudice, and in encouraging greater recognition among academics and practitioners. Related themes are discussed within the next chapter from Rosie Campbell, which uses policy developments in the context of violence against sex workers as an example of the progress that can be made through the convergence of service provision, national policy advocacy and scholarship within the hate crime arena. Finally, Joanna Perry points to the lack of clarity internationally with regard to the conceptualisation and measurement of hate crime as a way of underlining the importance of interaction between activism, scholarship, law and policy as part of a global framework for understanding and addressing targeted violence.
![]()
ONE
The adventures2 of an accidental academic in âpolicy-landâ: a personal reflection on bridging academia, policing and government in a hate crime context
Nathan Hall
The involvement of academia in the administration of government has been fairly common in the United States for some time. This has been progressively mirrored in recent years in England and Wales, where many policy makers in various hate crime circles both locally and nationally have, for a variety of reasons, become increasingly amenable to the notion of involving âoutsidersâ in the policy-making process. As an academic with a strong interest in hate crime based at an English university, I have been fortunate enough (depending on your point of view of course) to be a part of this shift in the practitioner/policy-making ethos over a number of years. In this chapter I reflect on my personal experiences as an academic venturing into the world of hate crime policy making within the context of both policing and central government. In addition, I discuss the implications of the lessons I have learned for understanding and furthering the academic-practitioner/policy-maker relationship.
Stephen Lawrence, Sir William Macpherson and an âaccidentalâ academic
In order to properly discuss and explain my experiences as an academic in the world of policy making, I should probably provide some context about how I got to be in this position (there is a possibility that this might turn into something of an autobiography for a while, so I hope youâll bear with me). My journey into hate crime scholarship starts, indirectly, with the murder of Stephen Lawrence in south-east London in 1993. I should point out, however, that I was 16 years old at the time of Stephenâs murder, and my only real concerns in life were about how well I would do in my GCSE examinations, what A-levels I should choose and, most importantly of all, the double anxiety of whether or not Arsenal would win the League and FA Cup finals, and whether Iâd be able be to get tickets to see both games at Wembley. Ultimately, my exams went well, I got into college, Arsenal won both finals, and I was there to see them do it (those of you reading this who have any interest in football will know the current importance to an Arsenal fan of reminiscing about the past, so I hope youâll forgive my brief indulgence here). So all in all, 1993 was a pretty good year. I had no idea at the time, and nor did I for many years to come, that the tragic events of the evening of the 22 April of that year would come to shape my professional, and indeed personal, life in such a profound way.
For the record, 1993 to 1998 were quite good years too. I passed my A-levels and got a place studying psychology and criminology at university, ultimately was awarded my degree, and gained a place on a Masterâs programme at Portsmouth. Throughout that time, I became increasingly aware of a âcampaign for justiceâ by Stephenâs parents, which reached a head in 1997 â midway through my undergraduate degree. Doreen and Neville Lawrenceâs tireless campaigning had found a receptive ear in Jack Straw, then shadow Home Secretary, who had made a commitment to the Lawrences that, should Labour be elected in the 1997 general election, then their wish for a public inquiry into their sonâs murder, for which nobody had been convicted at that time, would be granted.
For those of us involved in hate crime scholarship, and those involved in criminal justice policy making in the UK (and those of us who would come to flirt with both), what followed was undoubtedly our watershed moment. The murder of Stephen Lawrence, and in particular the public inquiry that published with damning conclusions and sweeping recommendations for change in 1999, are well documented elsewhere, so it is not my intention to go into detail here. I have argued previously (Hall, 2005, 2009, 2013; Hall et al, 2009) that, with the benefit of hindsight, the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry was the single most important event in bringing issues of hate crime to the fore in Britain. This was not just because of the Inquiryâs focus on racism, victimisation and the responses to it, and not just because of the far-reaching implications it was to have across the board, but also because the Lawrenceâs fight with âthe systemâ has left a legacy that has allowed other voices to be heard where they previously would not have been. Ultimately, a deep sense of injustice relating to racism, and the unwavering commitment of Doreen and Neville Lawrence in their search for truth, has opened the door for the proper and formal recognition of other forms of targeted victimisation, and given us our academic and political focus on what we now call âhate crimeâ.
In many ways, as an academic, I count myself among those voices that Stephenâs legacy has allowed to be heard. In February 1999, the month that the Stephen Lawrence Inquiry was published, I was about halfway through my Masterâs degree and was facing the dilemma that, as a university lecturer, I now know afflicts many students every year:what on earth would I do for my dissertation? In among weeks of procrastinating, I had narrowed it down to âpolicingâ (not a significant achievement, I readily accept), but I confess that racism in relation to policing was not really screaming out to me at that time (a situation that seems ludicrous, even embarrassing, to me now). This was to change, however, following a one-off lecture at the university on the eve of the Inquiryâ publication, by John Grieve, then Deputy Assistant Commissioner (DAC) of the Metropolitan Police â the man charged with the monumental task of leading the Metâs response to the Lawrence Inquiry. My recollection of the hour or two of DAC Grieveâs talk goes something like this:
DAC Grieve: âThe Stephen Lawrence Inquiry publishes soon. It doesnât look like weâre going to come out of it too well. But, weâve already started making changes. Weâve now got Community Safety Units in every London borough, and theyâre responsible for investigating racist, homophobic and domestic violence incidents. We think theyâre doing quite a good job, but what weâd really like is someone to undertake some short-term research to see if weâre right.â
Me:âIâll do itâ(and in my head â Policing? Check. Research? Check. Really interesting subject? Check. Dissertation sorted? Check).
Of course thatâs probably not an accurate account of what John said at all, but over the years that has become my abridged interpretation of the events of that day, and thatâs close enough for our purposes. In any event, my âaccidentalâ journey into hate crime scholarship had begun.
My first piece of hate crime research was therefore an evaluation of one of the Metropolitan Policeâs Community Safety Units (Hall, 2000), and in particular an analysis of the perceptions held by victims of racist hate crimes of the service they had received from the police. The process of conducting the research, and disseminating the findings, in hindsight revealed a lot about entering the world of policy makers. As part of both my undergraduate and postgraduate degrees I had, of course, studied research methods in considerable depth. I had read time and again about the difficulties of researching the police, particularly in relation to things like gaining access, facilitating interviews, and generally being permitted to âloiterâ alongside those doing a difficult job where suspicion is often the norm. As an inexperienced researcher I was more than a little surprised to find that many of the obstacles I had read so much about simply were not present. Looking back, it seems obvious to me now that entering into the world of police policy and practice as an academic is a far simpler affair when those at the top have an interest in your undertaking your work, rather than perceiving you as an inconvenience that they could do without. Indeed, several years later John Grieve would recall in the foreword to my book (Hall, 2005: xiii) that:
Some years ago, in the teeth of some ill-informed opposition, I introduced postgraduate students into the heart of the police intelligence system in the role of criminal intelligence analysts. This book epitomises what we were trying to achieve.
I doubt that I will ever really know the full extent of Johnâs influence in the smooth running of my postgraduate research (I have asked him on a couple of occasions, but each time I was met with a knowing smile and a slight shrug of the shoulders), but his comments in my book reveal some important shifts in thinking in the police perception of, and attitude to, academics in relation to policy and practice. Clearly, there was some resistance to âgetting helpâ from outsiders, particularly academics and students, and the importance of open-minded practitioner-leaders cannot be understated in understanding this fundamental shift in ethos: indeed, a decade later I would conclude in my PhD research that the calibre of leadership in policing is a core issue in determining the seriousness with which hate crime is taken by police services. Combine this with what I perceived to be a general attitude within the police at that time that things could not really get any worse following MacPherson, and the door for academic involvement in policing creaked open a little wider.
A further issue that emerges from Johnâs statement, above, relates to dissemination. While he stated that my book epitomised what he and his organisation were trying to achieve, I can say with absolute certainty that waiting six years for the findings to be made public was not what he had in mind. Of course I twist the reality slightly here. Part of the reason that postgraduate research was deemed ideal at the time was the speed at which the results could be obtained and, presumably, acted on. This of course highlights a perennial problem for the academic â practitioner relationship, namely that research necessarily takes time to provide âanswersâ that practitioners need yesterday, and is usually presented at a level of detail that practitioners rarely have time to read and digest, and/or written in that curious academic language that often contains unnecessarily big words and means little to anyone but other academics.3 The importance of this issue was starkly illustrated to me on the day I took my final bound Masterâs dissertation to New Scotland Yard to discuss my findings with officers from the Racial and Violent Crime Task Force (in other words, the policy makers), who worked under John Grieveâs directorship. The meeting itself, which I recall lasted a couple of hours, was illustrative enough of the need for academics to be concise, to the point, and above all to provide practical âsolutionsâ that can be translated into some sort of useful action or policy instruction. However, the need to be anything but verbose as an academic is forever etched on my memory from my experience of leaving the Yard to head for home. I got into the lift on the twelfth floor alone, pushed the button for the ground floor, and as the doors began to close there was a shout for me to hold the lift. As the doors reopened DAC Grieve stepped in. It was the first time I had been alone with him, but he clearly knew who I was and what I had been doing. As the doors closed I distinctly remember him informing me that the lift took approximately 30 seconds to get to the ground floor, and it would be helpful if I could use that time to tell him the âheadlinesâ from my research. He reassured me that his team would brief him more fully following the meeting I had just had, but that day highlighted the importance of getting the point across, and was certainly a lesson in cutting out unnecessary waffle.
Part of the problem for policy makers and practitioners is that academic research in the social sciences, unlike the pure sciences, rarely provides the answer, or indeed an answer. Rather, it usually provides something of a picture that, like pieces of art, is usually open to a degree of interpretation. As such, academic research often produces a range of findings for the reader to consider and, in many instances, results in more questions than answers. A cynic might suggest that this is academiaâs way of ensuring that research continues, but the reality is that this is the nature of trying to understand complex and dynamic social situations. That said, completely unintentionally, and not at all surprisingly, my postgraduate research concluded with the need for more research to be undertaken.
Fortunately for me, the forward-thinking and research-friendly DAC Grieve maintained his belief in the importance of academic input (and it seems his faith in me as a researcher), and conveniently held off his retirement, long enough for me to apply for, and get, a position of graduate teaching assistant with a funded PhD thrown in at the University of Portsmouth. My research access with the Metropolitan Police was duly extended to allow for a considerably more detailed PhD study, which initially sought to investigate many of the questions raised by the Masterâs research. To deal with the time and detail associated with PhD research, a condition of access was to provide regular, and short, summaries of the findings as they emerged. The interesting thing about undertaking a PhD (or one of them at least), is that slowly but surely you become an âexpertâ in your niche subject. While this might seem an obvious point to make, the net result is in my experience that the more you know, the more people will seek out your advice in the pursuit of resolving whatever issues they are currently dealing with. In my case, myâexpertiseâ in hate crime was about to unexpectedly, and again accidentally, expand rather rapidly.
In the summer of 2002, roughly halfway through my PhD data collection, for reasons that are unimportant here (but which I emphasise were not of my own making), I was informed that I could no longer continue my research in the London borough in which I had been working for a number of weeks, and nor could I use the data I had already collected. While I mulled over the prospect of starting that phase of the research all over again in another part of London, I took the decision to move to Portsmouth. What does that have to do with a book chapter about academia and policy making you might re...
