- Henning Kaiser Klatran, Norwegian Police University College: Hate crime against LGBT people and the failure of criminal justice: Towards a policing beyond law enforcement
- Görel Granström, Umeå University, Mika Hagerlid, Malmö University & Louise Gustafsson Malmö University: Assessing the utility of the Swedish hate crime law - does the formulation of the legal framework match the intentions of the legislators?
- Rune Ellefsen & Kristina Os, C-REX, University of Oslo: Reporting anti-LGBTQI hate crime: First-hand experiences and reasons for not reporting
- Tore Bjørgo, C-REX, University of Oslo: Preventing hate crime: A holistic approach
Abstracts
Hate crime against LGBT people and the failure of criminal justice: Towards a policing beyond law enforcement
Henning Kaiser Klatran, Norwegian Police University College
The demand for rights and recognition before the law, along with market participation, constitutes the very core of queer citizenship in liberal democracy. While queers only decades ago fought against criminalization and police harassment, they now increasingly call for extensive policing as a prerequisite for queer life. Hate crime legislation aligns ‘progressive’ queer politics with neoliberal configurations of crime control, marking a punitive turn of queer politics. Queer punitive investment, however, coincides with the criminological insight that law enforcement has a limited effect on crime. Policing of hate crime thus has an inevitable potential of failure in delivering justice to those who seek and demand protection by the state. A consequence of a collective, queer sentiment of police negligence could be a deepening distrust in the police and the state, and a return to pre-citizenship precariousness. As hate crime victimization is entangled with experiences of subjectivity and citizenship, there is a need for awareness of policing beyond criminal investigation and prosecution. Based on in-dept interviews with LBGT+ victims of hate crime, the paper addresses how symbolic policing may provide a sense of justice, recognition and belonging to queer victims of hate crime and the queer community.
Assessing the utility of the Swedish hate crime law - does the formulation of the legal framework match the intentions of the legislators?
Görel Granström, Umeå University, Mika Hagerlid & Louise Gustafsson, Malmö University
Hate crimes are a particularly serious form of criminality that is to be prioritized throughout the Swedish justice system. It is therefore deeply concerning that both state agencies and previous research point to extensive deficiencies in hate crime investigations. Few cases reach court, and it is often difficult to discern whether the hate motive has had an impact on sentencing, as is intended by the legislation as it should have according to the motives of the applicable legislation. The aim of the present study is to explore if the Swedish legal framework is correctly designed for the successful investigation and prosecution of hate crimes. In the present study, the authors use three different materials, 1) legal preparatory works and guidelines and compares these with 2) court practice in hate crime cases from 2018 and 3) interviews with prosecutors and judges. Based on these different materials, the authors use qualitative content analysis to identify the intentions and aims of the legislators, and compare these to court practice and the professional experiences of prosecutors and judges.
Reporting anti-LGBTQI hate crime: First-hand experiences and reasons for not reporting
Rune Ellefsen, Kristina Os, C-REX, University of Oslo & Mona Hovland Jacobsen, Norwegian Police Directorate
This study investigates the experiences and views about reporting hate crimes to the police among LGBTQI people in Norway. Over 3,000 survey respondents provided open-ended answers which we approached by inductive thematic analysis. We identified key experiences of reporting and reasons for not reporting hate incidents, and relate them to five distinct aspects of hate crime reporting that emerged from data. We found the experience and expectation that reporting to police leads nowhere, coupled with the great personal costs of reporting as the most prevalent ones. Findings illuminate a discrepancy between the government’s emphasis on countering anti-LGBTI hate crime and the lived experiences of LGBTQI citizens. The barriers we found to police reporting suggest an extensive underreporting of anti-LGBTI hate crimes. This has important implications for our understanding of official hate crime statistics and the “dark figures” of anti-LGBTQI hate crime. Our study highlights the need to reform the police handling of hate crime reporting and to provide alternative, less demanding routes for reporting and victim support.
Preventing hate crime: A holistic approach
Tore Bjørgo, C-REX, University of Oslo
Hate crimes are acts of crime motivated by bias or hatred against certain categories of people, such as religious, racial, or sexual minorities or people with disabilities. General principles of crime prevention may also work against hate crimes. This paper will present a generic model of crime prevention, discussing nine preventive mechanisms and measures that may be applied to activate these mechanisms to reduce hate crimes. Preventive mechanisms are simple theoretical explanations of how a measure is causing an effect, in this case, reducing hate crimes. Measures are the means implemented to activate a mechanism to achieve a specific outcome. A measure is what we do; the corresponding mechanism is how it works. The nine preventive mechanisms, applied to hate crime, are: 1) Building normative barriers against hate crime; 2) Reducing recruitment to hate groups and activities; 3) Deterring hate crimes; 4) Disrupting hate crimes; 5) Incapacitation of perpetrators of hate crime; 6) Protecting vulnerable targets of hate crime; 7) Reducing harm from hate crime; 8) Reducing rewards from hate crime; 9) Exit and rehabilitation from hate crime. A preventive strategy should be based on a holistic approach with a variety of interventions, involving a multitude of preventive actors with different measures at their disposal. This comprehensive approach can activate a broad range of preventive mechanisms that together can reduce hate crime and take well care of victims.