About the Paper

Hate crime has become an increasingly familiar term in recent times as problems of bigotry and prejudice continue to pose complex challenges for societies across the world. However, despite the greater recognition now afforded to hate crimes and their associated harms by scholars, policy-makers and criminal justice agencies, uncertainty continues to cloud the legitimacy of existing conceptual and policy frameworks.

Within this talk Neil draws from an emerging body of contemporary hate crime scholarship to address key areas of contestation in the ‘hate debate’. Specifically, he argues that by stringently associating hate crime with particular strands of victims and particular sets of motivations through singular constructions of identity, criminology has failed to move beyond a divisive and hierarchical approach to understanding hate crime. This has resulted in scholars and policy-makers overlooking a range of significant issues, including the more individualised acts of hate borne from boredom, jealousy or unfamiliarity with ‘difference’; the experiences of ‘marginal’ groups of victims; and the way in which identity characteristics intersect with one other, and with other situational factors and context, to exacerbate victims’ vulnerability in the eyes of hate crime perpetrators. Neil examines the significance of these oversights and describes how a new ESRC-funded research project will help to generate important new knowledge on these areas.

About Dr Neil Chakraborti

Having graduated from the University of Birmingham with an undergraduate degree in Law, Neil completed his postgraduate qualifications here at the Department of Criminology, graduating with an MA in Criminology in 1999 and a PhD in Criminology in 2007. He has worked at the Department since 1999, during which time he has conducted research on behalf of the British Oil Security Syndicate and the Dixons group to investigate issues of retail security; the Charlton Athletic Race Equality (CARE) Partnership to analyse the development of its anti-racist initiatives; and Greater Manchester Police to evaluate the effectiveness of their diversity training programme. Since then, he has conducted a series of research studies commissioned respectively by public authorities across three English counties designed to assess the problem of rural racism and minority ethnic households’ perceptions of service provision and support networks. Other recently completed projects include a systematic review of policing gang violence; an analysis of police engagement strategies used to promote dialogue with faith communities; and an evaluation of public authority responses to targeted violence and harassment on behalf of the Equalities and Human Rights Commission. Neil is a member of the Howard League for Penal Reform’s Research Advisory Group, and is the lead organiser (with Jon Garland) of the Partnership Against Targeted Hate (PATH), a knowledge exchange partnership between the University of Leicester and regional criminal justice organisations.

Neil has published widely on issues of hate crime, victimisation and policing diversity. He is editor of Rural Racism (Willan, 2004, with Jon Garland), author of Hate Crime: Impact, Causes and Responses (Sage, 2009, also with Jon Garland) and editor of Hate Crime: Concepts, Policy, Future Directions (Willan, 2010).