NCJ Number
226077
Editor(s)
Joanna Goodey,
Kauko Aromaa
Date Published
2008
Length
76 pages
Annotation
This booklet contains six papers on hate crime in selected European countries presented at the 2006 and 2007 Stockholm Criminology Symposiums.
Abstract
The first paper provides an overview and comparison of hate crime policies in the United States, Britain, Germany, and France. Using a matrix to characterize policy responses to hate crime, the paper charts the historical development and current status of hate crime interventions in each country. The second paper presents a critical overview of the current status of data collection in the European Union (EU) regarding one type of hate crime, namely, racist crime. This paper addresses the inadequacies of data collection on racist crime in many EU Member States, which impedes their ability to develop informed policies that can be effective in countering racist crime. The third paper presents a comparative overview of criminal justice responses to hate crime in London (England) and New York City. It examines the social construction of hate crime and how it contrasts with the operational legal definition of hate crime, which determines which incidents are investigated by police as potential hate crimes. The fourth paper provides a detailed examination of the Swedish model of data collection on hate crime. In 2006, the Swedish National Council for Crime Prevention assumed the responsibility of collecting Sweden's statistics on hate crime, which had previously been done by the Swedish Security Services. It has expanded the scope of hate-crime data collection to include acts related to xenophobia, anti-Semitism, homophobia, and Islamophobia. The fifth paper examines how racist crime is identified and recorded by the Finnish racist-crime monitoring system; and the sixth paper charts the development of the criminal-justice and civil-society responses to racist crime in the United Kingdom, focusing on the example of the London-Wide Race Hate Crime Forum. Tables, figures, and references