corinne funnell

Based on ethnographic research methods, the chapter provides important insights into the social worlds of victims of racist hate crimes. This includes the challenges faced by victims and caseworkers in maintaining hate crime victim status, particularly in respect of agencies such as the police who were supposed to be guided by the victim-centred definition of hate crime which operates in the criminal justice system in England and Wales and which was institutionalized in casework practice. The findings show how the rejection by police officers of some victims’ perceptions that they had experienced hate incidents, for example, due to lack of evidence, resulted, in some cases, in retaliatory acts by the victim. Highlighting the ‘processual’ (Bowling 1994, 1999) dynamics of victimization, the analysis captures the failure of the victim’s perception to trump police discretion in the reporting and recording of racist incidents at various stages and the consequences of the loss of victim status, including the risk of criminalization. It is concluded that whilst the victim-orientated definition of hate crime defines who is a victim, it is everyday ‘interactional practice’ (Holstein and Miller 1990) which determines who can be a victim.

This thesis presents the findings of an ethnographic study of the social worlds of racist hate crime victims and their caseworkers. The fieldwork involved participant observation and 25 interviews with victims and caseworkers at a charity that supports victims of racist hate crime, based in an ethnically diverse UK city. The aim of the research was to explore victims’ perceptions and experiences of racist hate crime in light of the victim-centred definition of ‘hate crime’ adopted by the criminal justice system in England and Wales. This research contributes to a gap in our understanding of who is victimized and how, with what impact, and why they believe they have been victims of racist hate crime. The literature review sets the foundations for the thesis, arguing that empirical research is required to understand victims’ perceptions of racist hate crimes at the micro-level and the process of victimization as it extends to claiming and negotiating hate crime victim status with, for...

This paper identifies the methodological and ethical dimensions raised by criminological research into racist hate crime victimisation. It is argued that a tendency by scholars to adopt American terminology and research findings has stymied the development of scholarship in England and Wales. Specifically, assumptions have been made about who can be a hate crime victim and about experiences of victimisation. It is suggested that British criminological research develop a corpus of theoretical and empirical knowledge capable of understanding and explaining indigenous hate crime.

A victim-oriented approach is advocated which employs mixed methods in order to attend to the nuances and complexities of hate crime, particularly the specificities of victim identity and victimisation. Addressing the need to explore qualitative methods capable of supplementing quantitative approaches in this endeavour, the methods-focused account presented in this paper highlights the challenges and opportunities of conducting ethnographic hate crime research. It is concluded that ethnography has the capacity to supplement quantitative methods and thereby achieve a victim-oriented ‘processual’ account of hate crime. It is suggested that this approach provides a potentially strong basis upon which to rejuvenate the research agenda and, in the form of a public criminology, contribute to national policy and practice development.