HATE CRIME

The simplest definition of what a hate crime is, is a crime committed against a victim due to his or her perceived role in a social group. Social groups can be defined by many factors such as sexual orientation, race, disability, religion, age, gender and many other factors. Within this essay I aim to evaluate the causes of hate crime and also to assess the impact of crime on victims and the strategies used for responding to hate crime. The types of hate crime I am going to be focusing on are race, sexual orientation and gender. What is hate crime?

Defining hate crime has proven to be a difficult task, shown by the multiple academic and professional definitions that exist. Barbara Perry (2001) suggests that “as is the case with crime in general, it is very difficult to construct an exhaustive definition of ‘hate crime’ that is able to take account of all of its facets”. In order to gain a greater understanding of hate crime I am going to present