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In May
2004 23 police forces across the UK launched a series of initiatives
aimed primarily at dealing with hate crime. The "True Vision"
campaign featured, among other things, an online reporting
system that aimed to target members of minority groups and
a widespread distribution network of literature and information
packs in bars and clubs. It defined hate crime as "any offence
committed against a person or property which is motivated
by an offender's hatred of people because they are seen as
being different" (True Vision, 2005) and was considered a
major step towards tackling what is a diverse and complex
area of criminology (BBC, 2004).
As we shall see in later sections of this paper, despite rises
in the incidences and reporting of hate crime, as Barbara
Perry asserts in her study In the Name of Hate (2001) racial
and sexuality motivated crime based on the perception of an
alienated Other is no new phenomena:
"It is important to keep in mind that what we currently refer
to as hate crime has a long historical lineage. The contemporary
dynamics of hate-motivated violence have their origins in
historical conditions. With respect to ethnoviolence, at least,
history does repeat itself as similar patterns of motivation,
sentiment, and victimization recur over time." (Perry, 2001:
2) 
Because of this, hate crime has a particular place within
criminology and psycho-sociology. With this in mind, in this
essay I would like to look at the ways in which it can be
viewed through canonical criminological theory. In the first
section I will look at the current level of hate crime in
the UK employing the Government's own statistics and reports
to isolate trends and significances both in terms of victims
and offenders. I will then go on to look at this in relation
to three of the main criminological theories; classical theory,
the environmental notions of the Chicago school and, finally,
labeling theory.
I will hope to assess the extent that each of these informs
us as to the nature and social place of hate crime before
going on to look at what post-modern theories of society can
tell us about how racial and sexuality based crime manifests
itself.
As detailed by the Home Office, there is a considerably higher
risk of being the victim of a racially motivated crime if
one is from a minority ethnic group. In 1999 there were an
estimated 280,000 instances of race based crime in the UK,
of these almost 100,000 were against Black, Indian, Pakistani
and Bangladeshi victims. The same survey concluded that there
was a 4.2 per cent risk of being the victim of a hate crime
if one heralded from Pakistan or Bangladesh, 3.6 per cent
for Indians, 2.2 per cent for Black people and only 0.3 for
whites.
The emotional response regarding the victim of a race crime
was noticeably different to one where race was not a factor.
In 1999, 42 per cent of victims asserted that they felt "very
much affected" (Home Office, 2005) by the crime as opposed
to 19 per cent of other offences, with Black victims most
likely to report the affects of their attacks as disturbing
(55 per cent of Black victims of race crime reported being
"very much affected" by their experience compared to 41 per
cent of Asians and whites).
Straight away these figures suggest that hate crime, as it
relates to race at least, is a complex issue that is affected
by not only the levels of reporting but also the perceived
distress it causes the victim. This situation can only become
more complex post 9/11, where issues of race, ethnicity and
cultural difference are reflected time and time again in the
media and popular press.
Of course, hate crime does not only relate to race. A recent
study of lesbians and gay men in the UK detailed that one
in three gay men and one in four lesbians have experienced
"at least one violent attack during 1990-1995" . In the Metropolitan
area alone there were some 1,239 incidents of homophobic hate
crime between 2001-2002; with a staggering 85 per cent of
incidents going unreported. In 2004, the Government gave a
£90,000 grant to the True Vision campaign specifically to
raise awareness in the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual communities
signaling an official recognition of what is a vastly expanding
area of crime and violence.
So, with this picture in mind, how can traditional criminological
theory inform us as to the motivations, social outcomes and
methods of control of hate crime in the UK and how can we
seek to integrate these within legislation? I will begin by
giving a brief outline of the three particular theories chosen
for exposition.
Canonical criminology can be seen to begin with the classical
notions of Bentham and Beccaria in the Enlightenment of the
eighteenth century. For classical theorists like Bentham,
crime results from a conscious desire to avoid pain and increase
the individual's experience of pleasure. The law is transgressed,
in this view, in order to palliate the desire for a complex
series of pleasures encompassing not only the physical but
the social, moral, economic and psychological, as Stuart Henry
and Mark Lanier detail:
"Bentham believed that people broke the law because they desired
to gain money, sex, excitement, or revenge. Like Beccaria,
Bentham saw law's purpose as increasing the total happiness
of the community through excluding "mischief" and promoting
pleasure and security" (Henry and Lanier, 1998: 70)
Unlike, say the positivist school of Cesare Lombroso and William
Ferrero who saw the criminal as biologically determined, classical
criminological theory views the offender as merely the product
of such desire, a view that is still reflected in social legislation
and Governmental policy today.
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