Policing Hatred explores the intersection of race and law enforcement in the controversial area of hate crime. The nation’s attention has recently been focused on high-profile hate crimes such as the dragging death of James Byrd and the torture-murder of Matthew Shepard. This book calls attention to the thousands of other individuals who each year are attacked because of their race, religion, or sexual orientation. The study of hate crimes challenges common assumptions regarding perpetrators and victims: most of the accused tend to be white, while most of their victims are not. Policing Hatred is an in-depth ethnographic study of how hate crime law works in practice, from the perspective of those enforcing it. It examines the ways in which the police handle bias crimes, and the social impact of those efforts. Bell exposes the power that law enforcement personnel have to influence the social environment by showing how they determine whether an incident will be charged as a bias crime. Drawing on her unprecedented access to a police hate crime unit, Bell’s work brings to life the stories of female, Black, Latino, and Asian American detectives, in addition to those of their white male counterparts. Policing Hatred also explores the impact of victim’s identity on each officers handling of bias crimes and addresses how the police treat defendants’ First Amendment rights. Bell’s vivid evidence from the field argues persuasively for the need to have the police diligently address even low-level offenses, such as vandalism, given their devastating cumulative effects on society.

In a contemporary setting of increasing social division and marginalisation, Policing Hate Crime interrogates the complexities of prejudice motivated crime and effective policing practices. Hate crime has become a barometer for contemporary police relations with vulnerable and marginalised communities. But how do police effectively lead conversations with such communities about problems arising from prejudice? Contemporary police are expected to be active agents in the pursuit of social justice and human rights by stamping out prejudice and group-based animosity. At the same time, police have been criticised in over-policing targeted communities as potential perpetrators, as well as under-policing these same communities as victims of crime. Despite this history, the demand for impartial law enforcement requires police to change their engagement with targeted communities and kindle trust as priorities in strengthening their response to hate crime. Drawing upon a research partnership between police and academics, this book entwines current law enforcement responses with key debates on the meaning of hate crime to explore the potential for misunderstandings of hate crime between police and communities, and illuminates ways to overcome communication difficulties. This book will be important reading for students taking courses in hate crime, as well as victimology, policing, and crime and community.

Violence motivated by racism, anti-Semitism, misogyny, and homophobia weaves a tragic pattern throughout American history. Fueled by recent high-profile cases, hate crimes have achieved an unprecedented visibility. Only in the past twenty years, however, has this kind of violence—itself as old as humankind—been specifically categorized and labeled as hate crime. Making Hate a Crime is the first book to trace the emergence and development of hate crime as a concept, illustrating how it has become institutionalized as a social fact and analyzing its policy implications. In Making Hate a Crime Valerie Jenness and Ryken Grattet show how the concept of hate crime emerged and evolved over time, as it traversed the arenas of American politics, legislatures, courts, and law enforcement. In the process, violence against people of color, immigrants, Jews, gays and lesbians, women, and persons with disabilities has come to be understood as hate crime, while violence against other vulnerable victims-octogenarians, union members, the elderly, and police officers, for example-has not. The authors reveal the crucial role social movements played in the early formulation of hate crime policy, as well as the way state and federal politicians defined the content of hate crime statutes, how judges determined the constitutional validity of those statutes, and how law enforcement has begun to distinguish between hate crime and other crime. Hate crime took on different meanings as it moved from social movement concept to law enforcement practice. As a result, it not only acquired a deeper jurisprudential foundation but its scope of application has been restricted in some ways and broadened in others. Making Hate a Crime reveals how our current understanding of hate crime is a mix of political and legal interpretations at work in the American policymaking process. Jenness and Grattet provide an insightful examination of the birth of a new category in criminal justice: hate crime. Their findings have implications for emerging social problems such as school violence, television-induced violence, elder-abuse, as well as older ones like drunk driving, stalking, and sexual harassment. Making Hate a Crime presents a fresh perspective on how social problems and the policies devised in response develop over time. A Volume in the American Sociological Association's Rose Series in Sociology

This engaging and thought-provoking text provides an accessible introduction to the subject of hate crime. In a world where issues of hatred and prejudice are creating complex challenges for society and for governments, this book provides an articulate and insightful overview of how such issues relate to crime and criminal justice. It offers comprehensive coverage, including topics such as: Racist hate crime Religiously motivated hate crime Homophobic crime Gender and violence Disablist hate crime

Bridging the River of Hatred portrays the career of George Clifton Edwards, Jr., Detroit's visionary police commissioner whose efforts to bring racial equality, minority recruiting, and community policing to Detroit's police department in the early 1960s were met with much controversy within the city's administration. At a crucial time when the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum and hostility between urban police forces and African Americans was close to eruption, Edwards chose solving racial and urban problems as his mission. Deeply committed to social justice, Edwards was a historical figure with vast political and legal experience, having served as head of the Detroit Housing Commission, a member of Detroit's common council, a juvenile court judge, a Michigan Supreme Court justice, and judge on the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. Incorporating material from a manuscript that Edwards wrote before his death, supplemented by historical research, Mary M. Stolberg provides a rare case study of problems in policing, the impoverishment of American cities, and the evolution of race relations during the turbulent 1960s.

“Hate They Neighbor shows in devastating detail the rise and persistence of tactics for preventing residential racial integration, starting in the 20th century and continuing into the present. Although many minorities can find good housing in areas they can afford, just enough of their neighbors still greet them with cross-burnings, firebombs, and violence to send an ongoing warning: integrate at your own risk." —Amanda I. Seligman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Despite increasing racial tolerance and national diversity, neighborhood segregation remains a very real problem in cities across America. Scholars, government officials, and the general public have long attempted to understand why segregation persists despite efforts to combat it, traditionally focusing on the issue of “white flight,” or the idea that white residents will move to other areas if their neighborhood becomes integrated. In Hate Thy Neighbor, Jeannine Bell expands upon these understandings by investigating a little-examined but surprisingly prevalent problem of “move-in violence:” the anti-integration violence directed by white residents at minorities who move into their neighborhoods. Apprehensive about their new neighbors and worried about declining property values, these residents resort to extra-legal violence and intimidation tactics, often using vandalism and verbal harassment to combat what they view as a violation of their territory. Hate Thy Neighbor is the first work to seriously examine the role violence plays in maintaining housing segregation, illustrating how intimidation and fear are employed to force minorities back into separate neighborhoods and prevent meaningful integration. Drawing on evidence that includes in-depth interviews with ordinary citizens and analysis of Fair Housing Act cases, Bell provides a moving examination of how neighborhood racial violence is enabled today and how it harms not only the victims, but entire communities. By finally shedding light on this disturbing phenomenon, Hate Thy Neighbor not only enhances our understanding of how prevalent segregation and this type of hate-crime remain, but also offers insightful analysis of a complex mix of remedies that can work to address this difficult problem. Jeannine Bell is Professor of Law at IU Maurer School of Law-Bloomington. She is the author of Policing Hatred: Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Hate Crime; Police and Policing Law; and Gaining Access to Research Sites: A Practical and Theoretical Guide for Qualitative Researchers (with Martha Feldman and Michele Berger).

Hate crime has become an increasingly familiar term in recent times as problems of bigotry and prejudice continue to pose complex challenges for societies across the world. Although greater recognition is now afforded to hate crimes and their associated harms, the problem is still widespread and many key questions remain unanswered. Are we doing enough to protect vulnerable members of society? Are we doing enough to address the offending behaviour of hate crime perpetrators? Are there better ways of understanding and responding to hate crime? This book brings together contributions from leading experts in the field to address these and other contested issues in this fascinating and often controversial subject area. Drawing upon innovative work being undertaken nationally and internationally, the book offers fresh ideas on hate crime scholarship and policy and in so doing enables readers to re-evaluate the concept of hate crime in the light of fresh research, theory and policy. It provides much-needed ways of taking the ‘hate debate’ forward as well as offering practical suggestions for developing both scholarship and policy in a more progressive manner.