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.

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

14. Email: uolhatecrime@le.ac.uk
Tel: 0116 252 3784 Mobile: 07795 826 061
Website: www.le.ac.uk/leicesterhatecrimeproject