The political contradictions of policing and countering anti-gay violence in New South Wales

The harassment, assault and murder of gay men and lesbians has always been a neglected issue in Australian crime research, official reports and policy-making. This partly reflects the degree to which researchers are very orthodox and cautious in their choice of subject matter, generally studying issues well after they feature in public, political and media concerns. But additionally, there have been no organisational pressures to develop this field. Whether from ignorance, conservatism or conscious homophobia, funding bodies, agencies and bureaux have all variously put this issue low on their own research agendas. This perspective is well captured in the recent comment made to me by a key local criminologist that anti-gay violence in New South Wales is “not an issue”. There is growing evidence that this social group experiences disproportionately high levels of violence, much of it in the form of "hate crime" – attacks motivated a deep animosity towards their group identity. However, entire books and lengthy reports on homicide make little or no mention of these killings. Similarly, all of the recent major reports investigating the sharply increased levels of recorded rates of violence in New South Wales, particularly serious assaults in the inner-city of Sydney, use data sources and categories for types of offence and victims which cloak this form of crime