Re-thinking hate crime: fresh challenges for policy and practice

Hate crime has become an increasingly familiar term in recent times as the harms associated with acts of bigotry and prejudice continue to pose complex challenges for societies across the world. However, despite the greater recognition now afforded to hate crimes by scholars, policy makers and law enforcers, uncertainty continues to cloud the scope and legitimacy of existing policy frameworks. This article draws from an emerging body of inter-disciplinary scholarship and empirical research to highlight a series of important realities about hate crime victimization and perpetration that tend to remain peripheral to the process of policy formation. It suggests that the focus on particular strands of victims and particular sets of motivations has overshadowed a range of significant issues, including the experiences of "marginal" groups of victims, and the way in which identity characteristics intersect with one another--and with other situational factors and context--to leave some targets of hate crime especially vulnerable. The article calls for a more fluid and multi-layered approach to policy formation, which engages with these realities, and which maximizes the real-life value of hate crime discourse.