Assessing the Impact of Hate: Findings from a Large-Scale Hate Crime Victimisation Survey by John Garland - a presentation from the BSA Teaching Group Regional Conference at the University of Surrey on 31 May 2014.
Salient Features of India constitution especially power and functions
Assessing the Impact of Hate: Findings from a Large-Scale Hate Crime Victimisation Survey by John Garland
1. Assessing the Impact of Hate:
Findings from a Large-Scale Hate
Crime Victimisation Survey
Jon Garland
Department of Sociology, University of Surrey
@Jon_Garland67
2. Outline
• Framing the Research
• Aims and Objectives
• Methodology
• Some Tentative Findings
3. The Leicester Hate Crime Project
Framing the Research
• Moving beyond the five recognised hate crime
victim groups
• Hearing the voices of those at the margins
• Understanding victim needs
4. The Leicester Hate Crime Project
• Received £370k of ESRC funding
• Two-year project based in Leicester
• Very small research team
• Involvement of outside agency
5. The Leicester Hate Crime Project
Aims of the Project
• To establish the nature and impact of victimisation directed
at people because of their identity, perceived vulnerability or
‘difference’
• To identify commonalities, differences and intersections
within the experiences of victims of hate crime
• To assess hate crime victims’ expectations & experiences of
agency responses
• To inform the quality of service provision offered to victims
of hate crime
6. The Leicester Hate Crime Project
Methodology
• Large-scale quantitative survey of victims of targeted
violence from all sections of Leicester’s diverse population
(online and hard copy)
• Semi-structured interviews and focus groups with victims of
targeted violence
7. ‘It’s just part and parcel of
my everyday life’
• Experiences of hate crime often normalised to the extent
where they become a routine part of people’s lives
• ‘Low-level’ harassment not regarded as especially harrowing
to some victims
• Asylum seekers and refugees
8. ‘They don’t belong here’
• Not uncommon for members of minority groups to express
hate, prejudice and bigotry towards other minority groups
• Resentment towards new or emerging communities
‘legitimised’ by some of the more established minority groups
• Historical and cultural tensions also evident
9. ‘Why doesn’t our pain count
as much as theirs?’
• Some of the most harrowing experiences of hate have been
suffered by victims on the margins of policy and conceptual
frameworks
• Homeless people
• People with mental health issues
• The ‘others’
10. ‘There’s nowhere I feel safe’
• Hate acts committed in a variety of different settings
• At home or nearby
• Public transport
• Public spaces
• City centre
• At or near places of worship
• In cars
• On the internet
• Via text messages
11. ‘How I dress and what I look like
makes all the difference’
• Findings so far suggest that dress and appearance play a key
role in victim selection
• 34% of our initial sample of respondents were concerned
that their dress or appearance might make them a victim
of hate crime
• 28% believed that they were targeted specifically because
of their dress or appearance
12. ‘Not knowing what they look like makes
things so much worse’
• Online abuse commonplace for younger victims
• Experienced through social networking sites, apps and
abusive texts
• Described by many as being more damaging than physical
attacks
13. Next Steps
• Continue data analysis
• Produce a number of outputs
• Conference 5 September