Hate crime: an overview of significance and relevance to Irish sociology

Introduction

The authors of this article had been working on the issue of hate crime from within frustrated disciplinary silos: from a sociological perspective, and from a legal perspective. In 2012, however, we began to discuss potential avenues for interdisciplinary research: tentative at first, and then with increasing energy and determination. In September 2014, the Hate and Hostility Research Group at the University of Limerick launched A Life Free From Fear – Legislating for Hate Crime in Ireland: An NGO Perspective. The Report presents the perspectives of civil society organisations who endeavour to challenge hate crime, and provides an analysis of the efficacy of Irish legislation in this area. The report received widespread media attention for the issue of hate crime and, at least in the short term, has been successful in placing it on the political agenda. This article will provide an overview of some key concerns relating to hate crime in an Irish context and conclude by raising the question of the relevance of this emergent field of research to Irish sociology.

What is hate crime?

The term hate crime refers to crimes which are committed against persons who have been targeted because of the identity group they are perceived to represent. Commonly targeted groups include people with disabilities, lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender persons and ethnic and racialised minorities. Hate crimes have a very significant impact on their victims who, in addition to suffering the direct effects of the crime are also subjugated by the offender’s perception of their identity as inherently deviant and lesser and experience a heightened fear of revictimisation based on the difficulties of minimising a risk which emanates from social hostility towards a key aspect of one’s identity. Each hate crime also creates a multitude of indirect victims, as unrelated members of the targeted communities vicariously experience their own subjugation and fear of victimisation. Hate crime is a message crime – it communicates to the targeted community that they are regarded as abject and that consequently, they are vulnerable to attack.

Hate crime as a social phenomenon

One of the disadvantages of using the word hate as a key referent is that it can cause the perception that offences involving targeted hostility result exclusively from individual pathology, and that as such, hate crime legislation seeks to regulate what is essentially an individual and private emotion (Perry, 2003a). However, we argue that hate crime is an inherently social phenomenon and as such merits a social response.

Targets of hate as socially defined

The targeted hostility which distinguishes hate crime from other offences involves a selection of victims which directly reflects existing social hierarchies. It is characterised by the expression of prejudice, not specifically against individuals but against the social groups with whom they are identified (Chakraborti and Garland, 2009; Green et al., 2003). In this sense, the direct victims of hate crimes are interchangeable with other members of their community. Hate crimes thus make manifest particular formations of intergroup relations within the society in which they occur, rather than a personal relationship between the perpetrator and victim.

The selection of groups for victimisation reflects the organisation of the society within which the hate crime occurs, specifically, contemporary cultural and social notions of difference and value. Most commonly, groups victimised are already socially, economically, culturally or politically excluded, already on the margins of society (Hall, 2013). As Perry (2003a) observes, ‘common sense’ notions of what is normal and abnormal mark the borders of belonging. She furthers notes that the belonging self is defined and associated with favourable, noble characteristics while the un-belonging ‘Other’ is equated with difference and deviance in the realm of simplistic in/out distinctions. In essence, she observes, the objects of hostility are defined and legitimated as targets by their broader status within the society in which they live (Perry, 2003a). A hate crime is a representation of societal prejudices and is the criminalised reflection of everyday discriminatory practices.

Maintaining the status hierarchy

As Perry observes, given its roots within the existing social structure, hate crime ‘must be understood as one of among an array of mechanisms by which deeply engrained sets of power relationships are maintained’ (Perry, 2003a: 97). These power relationships operate on socially constructed notions of difference and status that order groups in society hierarchically and shape their access to power, authority and resources.

Hate crime is the criminal manifestation of discriminatory practices in wider society, and allowing it to go unchecked maintains a social hierarchy premised on constructions of who belongs and who does not, who is normal and who is not, who is entitled or deserving and who is not (Hall, 2013; Perry, 2003a). Hate crime serves as an additional means to reproduce and fortify the existing social hierarchy through the use of intimidation and violence. Recognising the broader socio-political dimensions of hate crime negates the notion of hate as an irrational individual (individualising) pathology (Green et al., 2003).

‘Hate crime involves acts of violence and intimidation, usually directed toward 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 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’ (Perry, 2001: 10). Thus hate crime lays down a challenge to those members of society who value equality for all (Iganski, 2008).

The impact on social cohesion

In addition to the physical and psychological impact on the individual, and the terroristic effect of hate crime on the victims’ community, hate crime can also be conceptualised as an attack on society as a whole (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2012; Kahan, 2001). McDevitt et al., (2001: 698) argue that ‘hate crimes are inherently more harmful to the social fabric of society than comparable crimes without bias motive [sic].’ Because they both reflect and shape inter-group relations, hate crimes have been conceptualised as harmful to the ‘collective conscience’ (Iganski, 2008). Weisburd and Levin (1993: 26) observe that hate crimes can ‘polarise communities’, laying bare the divisions that exist in a society. Perry (2003a) holds that hate crime may further act as a vehicle through which communities are driven further apart, forcing members to operate in isolation to one another and encouraging intergroup conflict. Indeed, if left unaddressed the process of hate crime and retaliation can become cyclical (Weisburd and Levin, 1993). Levin argues that hate crime can contribute to:

‘a heightening of tension along already fragile intergroup lines, and a heightened risk of civil disorder. Even in the absence of explosive civil strife, the lessening of trust and a change in behaviour among affected groups in a community creates a distinct harm to the public interest’ (Levin, cited in Hall, 2013: 167).

Hall (2013) cites the Oldham ‘race riots’ in the UK in 2001 and the ‘hostile reactionary events across England’ in the aftermath of the brutal murder of Drummer Lee Rigby in the Woolwich area of London in the summer of 2013 as examples of the kind of intergroup hostility that can manifest in response to incidents which set communal fissures in stark relief.

The personal context of hate crime

Academic and non-academic literature on hate crime evince that violent manifestations of this phenomenon can be particularly brutal (Perry, 2003a). Nonetheless, Hall (2013) argues that the most important justification for the implementation of hate legislation is the greater harm incurred by direct victims of even more minor offences. Previous studies provide convincing evidence that victims of hate crimes suffer more severely than victims of equivalent crimes which are not associated with targeted hostility (Iganski, 2008). As various research demonstrates, those who have experienced hate offences report a wider range of negative psychological impacts which also last longer than those exhibited by victims of non-hate parallel offences (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2012; Herek et al., 2002; Iganski, 2008; McDevitt et al., 2001; Willis, 2008; Smith et al., 2012).

Recent British Crime Survey findings demonstrate that victims of hate crime ‘were more likely than victims of BCS crime overall to say that they were emotionally affected by the incident (ninety-two per cent and eighty-six per cent, respectively) and more likely to be “very much” affected (thirty-eight per cent and seventeen per cent respectively)’ (Smith et al., 2012: 22); victims of hate crime reported higher levels of ‘anger’, ‘shock’, ‘loss of confidence/feeling vulnerable’, ‘fear’, ‘anxiety/panic attacks’, ‘crying/tears’, ‘difficulty sleeping’ and ‘depression’ (Smith et al., 2012).

Victims of hate crime may be particularly impacted by being targeted on the basis of who they are. There may be a sense that there is little or nothing they can do to manage the risk of future victimisation: victim interchangeability is core to the process of hate crime – victims are targeted because they are perceived as symbolic representatives of ‘Otherness’ (Berk et al., 2003; Chakraborti and Garland, 2009; Iganski, 2008). Victims of hate crime cannot simply assert that their experience was just an unlucky occurrence – wrong place, wrong time – ‘instead they are forced to accept that their social identity was targeted and they remain at risk of repeat victimisation’ (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2012: 20). As victims are chosen on the basis of real or perceived characteristics they cannot change, those vulnerable to hate crime may experience this phenomenon at anytime, anywhere (McDevitt et al., 2001; Willis, 2008). In some cases, victims of hate crime may also internalise the hatred which their attackers manifest.

Victimised communities: the ripple effect

Hate crime is a message crime. The targeting of victims on the basis of their social group membership communicates to all members of that group that they are equally at risk and that they do not belong. As such, the terrorising effect of hate crime goes beyond the individual to generate fear and anxiety among the broader community of which the victim is part; what the EUFRA refers to as the ‘resonating nature of hate crime’ (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2012: 18). This terroristic effect impacts upon how people live their lives, manage their comings and goings, including how and when they go out and where. This in itself may perpetuate feelings of anxiety, fear and low self-esteem and result in victims living a restricted existence (Iganski, 2008).

Hate crimes then can be perceived as ‘symbolic crimes’ that communicate Otherness and operate as an exclusionary practice (Perry, 2003b: 9); they have the effect of regulating marginalised social groups. Indeed, the targeted community must be counted as the secondary victims of the offender (Chakraborti and Garland, 2009; Hall, 2013; McDevitt et al., 2001).

The current legal situation in Ireland

Hate crime is not specifically proscribed in Irish criminal law, nor is there any obligation on members of the judiciary to enhance a sentence due to the presence of a ‘hate’ motivation during the course of the commission of an offence. Internationally, there are two ways in which hate crime can be punished through the law. The first is by introducing new aggravated forms of existing offences, such as, for example, assault aggravated by hostility, or racially aggravated criminal damage. The second key way in which hate crime is punished in other jurisdictions is through sentence enhancement. Here, legislation or judicial guidelines will require a sentencing court to enhance or aggravate the sentence where it is established by the prosecution that the crime was motivated by ‘hate’, or where ‘hate’ was demonstrated during the course of the commission of the offence.

We have no such legislation or judicial guidelines in Ireland, and the sentencing system in Ireland is a discretionary one, with few limitations and even less guidance given to the Courts on sentencing issues. Courts are fiercely protective of this discretion and have traditionally been slow to impose any structure or guidance on sentencing practices on lower courts.

There are currently no guidelines in the context of hate motivated offences, and the Irish Sentencing Information System offers no advice as to how such offences have been sentenced in the past. Irish courts have yet to find that where an attack appears to have been motivated or aggravated by hate, that fact should be treated as an aggravating factor and given the dearth of information regarding the day to day operation of the district court, it is impossible to determine how these offences are being dealt with currently. Further, as the issue is one in which the courts have absolute discretion, this can (and arguably, has) led to inconsistent sentencing practices in relation to hate crime.

International context

Ireland’ s membership of various supranational organisations has resulted with various bodies calling for the Irish State to amend or introduce legislative measures inter alia that specifically address hate crime in its multifarious forms. For example, in a 2012 publication the EUFRA noted specifically that Ireland, in addition to limited data collection, is ‘also limited because criminal law does not define racist or related hate offences as specific offences, nor does it expressly provide for the taking into account of racist motivation as an aggravating factor . . . the 2008 Irish Crime Classification System . . . does not cover offences with a suspected hate motivation’ (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2012: 37). Drawing on the Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA, in addition to penalising incitement offences, EUFRA notes that Member States are encouraged to deploy ‘effective, proportionate and dissuasive criminal penalties’ to challenge hate crime as aggravated offences or penalty enhancements (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2012: 37).

The legislative lacuna apparent in Ireland in relation to hate crime and the problematic nature of the Prohibition of Incitement to Hatred Act 1989 has also been subject to international scrutiny. As a Member State of the European Union, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the Council of Europe, and a signatory to various United Nations Human Rights Conventions, Ireland’s performance in terms of addressing hate crime is reviewed on an ongoing basis. All of these bodies have been critical of the manner in which Ireland engages, more accurately, fails to address hate crime. The United Nations Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (UNCERD) in response recommended that the Irish State should introduce legislation that specifically defines hate crimes based on ‘race’ as distinct offences, or place in statute, an obligation on members of the judiciary to consider racism as an aggravating factor at sentencing. As with the UNCERD, the UN Universal Periodic Review of human rights observers recommended that Irish authorities take steps to challenge racism, xenophobia, religious intolerance and racial profiling through the introduction of specific legislation; furthermore, recommendations were also made that members of the judiciary and police undertake human rights training. The OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) has been critical of Ireland in relation to the potential for inconsistency in terms of enhanced sentencing for hate crime offences given the discretionary manner in which this can be applied by Judges. Moreover, the ODIHR has consistently underscored the need for specific legislation and enhanced punitive sentences to be implemented if hate crime is to be challenged effectively (Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2005; 2007; 2008; 2009; 2010).

Prevalence and significance

Because (as we will later argue) of the legislative lacuna on hate crime in Ireland, huge gaps exist in our knowledge of this phenomenon in the Irish context. Various actors have been critical of the manner in which the apparatuses of the Irish State gather data on hate crime at the national and international levels. Ireland is described as having only ‘limited data collection mechanisms pertaining to hate crime’ in a report published by the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (2012: 36). The EUFRA report notes that Ireland publishes data on racist and anti-Semitic hate crime. More recently, data on the total number of police recorded crimes with a homophobic motivation have been published. In contrast, the Netherlands collects and publishes data ten differing grounds including religion, disablism, anti-Muslim and anti-Roma to name but four (European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2012; Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe, 2015). According to the website of the Office for the Promotion of Migrant Integration (2015), there were only ninety-four racist hate crimes in 2013. These figures have been criticised for undercounting the real levels of racist hate crime in Ireland. Thus, the limited data that are produced are hugely problematic and massively underscore the realities of racist hate crime in Ireland (Clarke, 2012).

Non-governmental bodies representing multiple constituencies gather and collate data on experiences of hate crime. These data demonstrate the realities of hate in Ireland and underscore the problems associated with poor data collection on the part of the Irish State and the inadequate number of grounds upon which hate crime is recognised. Furthermore, these third party reporting mechanisms provide those who have been the victims of hate crime with an alternative means through which to report experiences of hate other than the State. The European Network Against Racism Ireland (2014) operates such an online reporting mechanism known as iReport.ie. In its first quarter alone the iReport.ie logged ninety-seven racist incidents; this was followed by ninety-one in the second quarter (ENAR Ireland, 2015). TENI, the Transgender Equality Network Ireland and GLEN the Gay and Lesbian Equality Network Ireland coordinated research undertaken by the European Agency for Fundamental Rights on the experiences of hostility and discrimination as lived by members of LGBT people in Ireland. The results demonstrated that almost one third of participants had experienced physical assaults or the threat thereof; one in two participants had been subjected to harassment (GLEN, 2015). In relation to religious minorities, research undertaken by Carr (2014) evidences the manner in which Muslim communities in Ireland experience hostility and discrimination at a rate of one in three in both cases; when controlled for sex the rates of hostility and discrimination experienced by Muslim women rise to almost one in two. In each of these studies clear evidence exists to demonstrate low levels of reporting of experiences of hate crime to the Gardaí. This reluctance is premised on fears of secondary victimisation; feelings that nothing will happen should they report; and a worrying perception that experiencing hate crime is the norm if you are ‘different’ and live in Ireland.

Conclusion: an emerging field for Irish sociology

The academic study of hate crime is an interdisciplinary and, in some cases transdisciplinary, endeavour, dominated by legal scholars and criminologists, but also incorporating the work of sociologists, social psychologists, political scientists, anthropologists and more. While sociologists are in a minority, the discipline of sociology nonetheless has the potential to make significant contributions to the field. Prof. Barbara Perry of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, a leading hate studies scholar and sociologist, documents work which draws upon heterosexism, strain theory and Marxist theory to develop a more contextualised understanding of hate crime, although this work comes in many cases from academics from other disciplines (Perry, 2009). She herself draws upon Iris Marion Young’s work to conceptualise hate crime as part of and reflecting more systemic oppression. Nonetheless, Perry argued in 2009 that the theorisation of hate had, to date, more commonly focused on psychological explanations for individual offender’s acts of hostility. She notes the relative underdevelopment of structural analyses of hate as a social phenomenon; of the social, political and other contexts which engender, facilitate or constrain hate crime and of the relationship between hate crime and broader systems of oppression. Sociology then has much yet to lend to the developing field of hate studies.

Prof Perry publishes in outlets frequented by sociologists such as Race, Gender and Class, Race and Justice and the Canadian Review of Sociology and Anthropology; other sociologist and non-sociologist colleagues from the field of hate studies also publish in such fora, including American Behavioral Scientist, Sociology Compass (Randy Blazak), International Journal of Social Research Methodology, Journal of Youth Studies, Critical Social Policy and Sociological Research Online (David Gadd). Sociologist Prof Paul Iganski has contributed to and been referenced in the Oxford Dictionary of Sociology. Nonetheless, the profile of hate studies within the discipline is as yet limited. For example, prior to 2015, Sociology, the leading journal of the British Sociological Association, had published a total of four research articles which employ the concept of ‘hate crime’ in-text, one further article which employed the term ‘hate speech’ and not one that used the term ‘hate incident’ or ‘hate studies’. Similarly, the American Sociological Association’s top-ranking title the American Sociological Review had published only four research articles which used the term hate crime in-text. None of the articles published in the ASR employed the terms ‘hate incident’, ‘hate speech’ or ‘hate studies’. Arguably, the limited recognition of hate studies within sociology is a function of the youth of the field and its interdisciplinarity. It highlights, however, the potential for the development of greater dialogue between the two.

In an Irish context, perhaps one of sociology’s first contributions to the field of hate studies might be to promote a critical understanding of policy agendas as socially constructed. Often deployed to critique the manner in which groups are unfairly problematised, in this instance the social constructionist approach to social problems might be employed to illuminate the role of Ireland’s legislative regime in the (un)making of hate crime as a recognised social issue. In this jurisdiction, it can be argued that our legislative lacunae contributes to a veil of silence around the issue of hate crime; the absence of hate crime legislation discourages victims from reporting and constrains police reporting, in turn repelling enumeration. The absence of data is equated with the absence of a problem, and there is no need to legislate against a phenomenon that (officially) does not exist.

The publication of our report ‘A Life Free From Fear: NGO Perspectives on the Adequacy of Hate Crime Legislation in Ireland’ is in many senses a first attempt to challenge the statistical vanishing act that negates the existence of targeted violence against less powerful identity groups. In this report, we effectively produce hate crime for our intended audience of legislators and policy makers through naming and definition, and we support the legitimacy of this classificatory act by grounding the concept in the direct accounts of those civil society organisations who work directly with commonly targeted groups. The majority of participating NGOs identified their clients’ experiences of hate crime as being associated primarily with either racism or hostility towards LGBT persons. The types of hate incident identified by NGOs included physical violence, sexual abuse, verbal abuse and harassment. Overwhelmingly the organisations regarded the current legislative regime as inadequate to addressing their clients’ victimisation. Through synthesis and publication of these organisations’ perspectives on the significance of hate crime to Irish society and the inadequacy of our criminal justice responses, we aim to place hate crime on the legislative agenda. In doing so, it is hoped that we will also place it on the research agenda.