Hate crime

The use of the designation ‘hate crime’ is widely agreed to have arisen in the United States in the 1980s in the context of campaigns for public awareness and policy responses to the incidence of crimes victimizing ‘racial’, ethnic and religious minorities. From the beginning, therefore, the concept was political, and remains unavoidably so. Hate crime may be defined as a type of crime, typically violent, threatening or humiliating, in which the victim or victims are selected – or believe they are selected – because they belong to a group which is the subject of prejudice, bias or hatred on the part of the perpetrator(s). they are crimes committed against those ‘different’ from those who take themselves to be the measure of difference, and are in some position to do so