Reconceptualizing hate crime victimization through the lens of vulnerability and ‘difference’
| Date | 01 November 2012 |
| DOI | 10.1177/1362480612439432 |
| Published date | 01 November 2012 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
Article
Theoretical Criminology
16(4) 499 –514
Reconceptualizing hate crime
© The Author(s) 2012
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DOI: 10.1177/1362480612439432
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of vulnerability and ‘difference’
Neil Chakraborti and Jon Garland
University of Leicester, UK
Abstract
This article suggests that the concepts of vulnerability and ‘difference’ should be focal
points of hate crime scholarship if the values at the heart of the hate crime movement
are not to be diluted. By stringently associating hate crime with particular strands of
victims and sets of motivations through singular constructions of identity, criminologists
have created a divisive and hierarchical approach to understanding hate crime. To counter
these limitations, we propose that vulnerability and ‘difference’, rather than identity and
group membership alone, should be central to investigations of hate crime. These concepts
would allow for a more inclusive conceptual framework enabling hitherto overlooked
and vulnerable victims of targeted violence to receive the recognition they urgently need.
Keywords
‘Difference’, hate crime, identity, victimization, vulnerability
Introduction
The concept of a ‘hate crime’ is now a familiar one to criminologists and to scholars in
the related disciplines of sociology, psychology, public policy, political science and legal
studies. For many, a hate crime is a politically and socially significant term that captures
the intersections between various forms of bigotry; an umbrella concept with the capacity
to unite disparate social movements and to direct attention towards the collective experi-
ences of minority groups and the commonalities in their victimization. For others, hate
Corresponding author:
Neil Chakraborti, Department of Criminology, University of Leicester, 154 Upper New Walk, Leicester,
LE1 7QA, UK
Email: nac5@le.ac.uk
500
Theoretical Criminology 16(4)
crime is a slippery and somewhat elusive notion whose conceptual and operational ambi-
guity raises thorny questions for those charged with responding to the forms of victimiza-
tion and perpetration associated with the construct.
Whatever one’s viewpoint—and many criminologists would agree that neither stance
is mutually exclusive—the underlying principles of the hate crime movement are laudable.
A growing awareness of the harms associated with acts of bigotry and prejudice has been
evident in most western democracies over recent decades. The apparent rise in the number
of such incidents (at least in terms of recorded figures), together with greater public
acceptance of ‘difference’ and the legacy of progressive social movements, has stimulated
considerable interest within scholarly and law enforcement domains. The ensuing raft of
empirical, legislative and other associated policy interventions reveals the regional, national
and international prioritization of hate crime discourse and its importance to the governance
of diversity and community cohesion.
At the same time however, our understanding of hate crime is far from complete, or
as Phyllis Gerstenfeld (2004: xv) observed some years ago, ‘hate crimes seem to be a
topic of some interest to nearly everybody, and yet few people really know much about
them’. Certainly, on the basis of what we learn through academic, policy and public dis-
course it would seem that hate crime can mean very different things to different people.
Some, particularly lay-people, will understandably adopt a more literal interpretation in
line with the more violent and extreme cases that make the news. Scholars, meanwhile,
tend to see hate crimes as a social construct with no straightforward meaning and offer a
set of defining characteristics which they regard as central to their commission.1 Practitioners
are likely to pursue a much less complex view which requires few of the machinations
evident within academic interpretations.
Amid this conceptual confusion a keenly argued debate has taken place regarding
which groups are able to think of themselves as ‘hate crime victim groups’, and thus be
entitled to protection by relevant ‘bias crime’ legislation. This debate, and the accompany-
ing legislation, has tended to centre around relatively narrow conceptualizations of identity
and community, commonly regarded as immutable or fundamental as protected charac-
teristics.2 Reflecting the roots of the concept of hate crime in the civil rights struggles in
1960s and 1970s USA, a common pre-requisite for scholars and criminal justice practi-
tioners regarding hate crime victims is that they must come from traditionally marginalized
minority groups. In other words, members of majority communities cannot be understood
to be victims of hate crimes as this is the preserve of historically disadvantaged minorities,
even if the nature of their targeted victimization is very similar.
The limitations of this approach to hate crimes were thrown into sharp relief by the killing
of goth Sophie Lancaster in 2007 in a public park in Lancashire, northern England. Sophie
had been the victim of a brutal assault from five strangers who targeted her because of her
visually striking appearance—her ‘difference’ (Garland, 2010). Even though the Judge at
the Court of Appeal labelled the case a ‘hate crime’ no specific hate crime legislation existed
under which her attackers could be prosecuted, because Sophie was not from one of those
officially recognized hate crime victim groups that are included under such laws.
Since this case pressure has grown, not least from the Sophie Lancaster Foundation
itself, to include other groups in the remit of hate crime legislation.3 However—and as
Chakraborti and Garland
501
this article goes on to argue—approaching the issue of inclusion through the lens of
group identity politics merely exacerbates existing problems, creating divisions among
communities of identity rather than highlighting the shared nature of their victimization.
Instead, we call for a re-evaluation of the way in which hate crime has come to be strin-
gently associated with particular forms of victimization based upon one-dimensional,
though well-intentioned interpretations of identity. Specifically, we propose that perceived
vulnerability and ‘difference’ should feature more prominently in the ways in which
scholars and policy-makers across the world think about hate crime in order to counter
the limitations of prevailing frameworks.
This article begins by examining the overarching themes of such frameworks, and
considers them within the context of particular lived realities of hate crime victimization
that have been marginal to the construction of theory and policy. It then argues for a
fresh, vulnerability-based, framework designed to prevent scholars, law enforcers and
practitioners from becoming side-tracked by factors peripheral to targeted victimization.
Such a focus, we assert, would extend recognition to the more ‘hidden’ victims of hate
crime and would enable them to receive access to a more extensive range of support
services.
Conventional conceptual frameworks
As with crime in general, hate crime is a social construct. It emerges from a complex
network of events, structures and underlying processes, and, as such, will be constructed
according to different actors’ perceptions, whether they are scholars, law enforcers or
victims (Hall, 2012). That hate crime can have multiple meanings is evident from the
variety of interpretations offered within the existing literature. For some, hate crimes are
those which inflict greater harm upon their victims than other crimes (Iganski, 2001). For
others, they are illegal acts motivated, at least in part, by the group affiliation of the victim
(Gerstenfeld, 2004). Alternatively, and reflecting the UK’s post-Macpherson victim-
oriented agenda,4 hate crimes can refer simply to any incident perceived by the victim to
be motivated by hate or prejudice (ACPO, 2005).
In the absence of a universal definition it is Barbara Perry’s (2001) work in this area that
has garnered the most support. Perry’s contribution is by no means the only one to have
influenced the development of hate crime scholarship (see, for example, Jacobs, 2002;
Lawrence, 1999), nor does it offer a hegemonic conceptualization that has anchored academic
interpretations or law enforcement responses. That said, her conceptual framework has left
an indelible imprint upon contemporary hate crime discourse not just in her ‘home territory’
of North America, but elsewhere as well (see, inter alia, Chakraborti, 2010; Garland, 2012;
Hall, 2005; Iganski, 2008). As such, it is worth examining her stance in some detail as its
implications—and limitations—are central to the arguments that follow in this article.
According to Perry (2001: 10):
Hate crime … involves acts of violence and intimidation, usually directed towards already
stigmatised and marginalised groups. As such, it is a mechanism of power and oppression,
intended to reaffirm the precarious hierarchies that characterise a given social order. It attempts
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Theoretical Criminology 16(4)
to re-create simultaneously the threatened (real or imagined) hegemony of the perpetrator’s
group and the ‘appropriate’ subordinate identity of the victim’s group. It is a means of marking
both the Self and the Other in such a way as to re-establish their ‘proper’ relative positions, as
given and reproduced by broader ideologies and patterns of...
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