The aim of this essay is to address some of the key issues and theological approaches surrounding hate crime. Hate crime is when a perpetrator commits a crime which is prejudice-motivated due to the perpetrator’s perception of a person’s religion, race, disability, sexual orientation or transgender identity (Washington State Democratic Party, 2017). Firstly, this essay will attempt to describe the key issues with reporting hate crime and how difficult hate crime can be to prove. The essay will go on to explain some of the key theological approaches that attempts to understand hate crime.
One of the issues described by DR Barbara Perry is “Different levels of organizational procedure exist around hate crimes. In order to be reported, hate crimes must be recognized, counted, and eventually reported. There are vast differences between police departments whether, the degree to which, and in what way officers are trained” (Perry, 2015)
Under reporting hate crime usually stems from a negative relationship between victims of crime and the police. If for example a victim lives in an area where law enforcement was deemed corrupt and racist, they are unlikely to report the crime because simply, there is no trust that the police would take the crime seriously. For instance, the murder case of Stephen Lawrence. Stephen Lawrence was a young black male who was Stabbed while waiting for the bus. The murder of Stephen Lawrence was racially motivated. some of the Metropolitan police service refused that Stephen’s murder was a hate crime, instead it was believed that Stephen had been involved in drugs and having a fight, although there was no evidence to suggest this.
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The Metropolitan police service had let Steven and his family down by not properly investigating his murder, even though there was evidence and surveillance proving that the killers where racist the police did not act. (YouTube, 2019). “It turned the spotlight squarely on racism within the Metropolitan Police and diagnosed what black Britons had been calling out for decades with a single phrase: institutional racism” (Khan, 2018).The result of this investigating means there is a lack of trust between People who may be victims of hate crime, Which naturally leads to the underreporting of hate crime.
In order to help build the public’s trust with the police, Avon and Somerset police developed a training programme that 2000 officers had completed which aims to develop knowledge of unconscious bias for all frontline officers. (Justiceinspectorates.gov.uk, 2018)
