Kevin Wong

Hate Crime Victims and Hate Crime Reporting: Some Impertinent Questions

Much of the academic, practitioner and voluntary sector interest in victims of hate crime have focused upon the impacts of hate crime and the practical and emotional support needs and services for victims. Our own work has been somewhat divergent from this. We were commissioned to identify how hate crime reporting could be improved in a northern town, and made inclusive across different equality groups. We undertook a small scale study that examined individual decision making by hate crime victims in whether or not to report incidents, and how the available reporting arrangements and associated publicity materials affected these decisions (Wong & Christmann, 2008). Somewhat to our surprise, what appeared to be a critical issue in terms of whether or not hate crime policies were likely to succeed was also a much under researched area. Whilst our own research findings cannot be generalised beyond the study site, it did allow us to test out and consider more thoroughly some of the assumptions implicit in policy developments around hate crime reporting, specifically the policy goal of full reporting. We want to reflect back on these findings and the broader research literature to pose some questions on the adequacy and utility of the current reporting agencies approaches and the general policy direction to hate crime victims. We believe this has merit because the statutory criminal justice agencies and the voluntary sector are grappling with the challenges of adopting hate crime in its broadest sense, and providing a responsive, effective and victim centred service across markedly different vulnerable groups. Pertinent questions can be asked about what the current policies on hate crime can be expected to achieve given the nature of victim decision making on the critical issue of whether to report their victimisation. We will draw out some implications that the legacy of the Lawrence Inquiry has had for strategic thinking, policy making and make some tentative suggestions on how these might be improved. We argue something that may be considered heresy among hate crime victimloogy circles and victim campaigning groups; that the current policy message concerning victim reporting does not reflect reality, and risks being discredited. What is required, some 10 years post Lawrence is more nuanced responses and ones which acknowledge: the distance travelled by criminal justice agencies in the intervening years; that the majority of hate crime is manifested as single incidents of harassment (which may not necessarily constitute crimes); and the unlikelihood of full reporting by the public, which realistically fits where the public are in terms of their expectations. In doing so we do not pretend to have any authoritative answers to these issues, but believe the questions are worth posing to prompt a debate between efficacy of response versus a largely unchallenged view of hate crime victimology.

Justice reinvestment : can the criminal justice system deliver more for less?

1. Introduction, 2. Rising prison numbers: the key challenge for criminal justice policy, 3. Justice Reinvestment overview, 4. A new approach to criminal justice policy, 5. Justice mapping, 6. Justice Reinvestment and evidence-based policy, 7. The economics of criminal justice policy, 8. New ways of financing criminal justice interventions: Payment by results and Social Impact Bonds, 9. Conclusion.

The role of victim decision-making in reporting of hate crimes

This study tests assumptions implicit in many of the policy developments around hate crime reporting that concern the social context and some of the psychological processes behind decisionmaking on victim reporting. Results suggest that official concern over reporting all hate crimes for service planning requirements is not shared by the overwhelming majority of respondents and would not be feasible to deliver. If reporting is to be increased it needs to deliver a more tangible and personally experienced outcome for the individual.

Justice Reinvestment in an “Age of Austerity”: Developments in the United Kingdom

Abstract In the UK, national and local governments are struggling to cope with the economic crisis which ensued in 2008. The effects of that crisis are still being felt in the United Kingdom, with significant reductions in public sector expenditure leading to budget cuts in the criminal justice system and public services more generally. In June 2013, the UK Chancellor projected further expenditure cuts from 2015 onward. Justice reinvestment (JR) has been proposed by UK policy makers and campaign groups as one way of responding to these economic problems. Proponents argue that, at a modest level, it has the potential to deliver efficiency gains in how the criminal justice system is operated. On a more ambitious scale, JR may fundamentally transform the way in which criminal justice services are delivered. Drawing on evidence from JR experiments in the United Kingdom—including Payment by Results (PbR) pilots in England and Wales—this paper examines the nature and extent to which models of JR can be implemented in an “age of austerity” against the backdrop of the wider application of PbR commissioning for criminal justice and related services.

The prevalence of youth racially motivated offending: What do we really know?

This article reports on research conducted for the Youth Justice Board (YJB) which sought to establish the prevalence of racially motivated offending (RMO) amongst young people and the level of provision for such offenders. The article examines trends in youth RMO over the period 2002-2007 and explores the characteristics of offenders, geographical trends of RMO and sanctioning outcomes. Analysis demonstrates that of those young people referred to youth offending service (YOS) teams for RMO, the vast majority were male and white. There was a noticeable ‘North-South’ split in RMO, with levels in the North generally higher than in the South and sanctions for racially motivated offences were more severe than for offences generally. The paper calls for further investigation into the legislation and practice around youth RMO.

Justice Reinvestment – thinking outside the cell

In Crime and Punishment in America, Elliot Currie (1998) notes that, short of major wars, mass imprisonment has been the most thoroughly implemented USA government social programme of recent times. In the last two decades, the increase in imprisonment in the UK has outpaced even that of the USA, (Figure 2). This increase in imprisonment arises, not from increasing insecurity about crime rates, but rather from increasing social insecurity and ideology, according to Loic Wacquant (Wacquant, 2012). However that may be, Currie argues the expensive experiment in substituting imprisonment for social investment is not working. Fortunately, there may be alternatives.