Temporal Clustering of Racially Motivated Crime in the Wake of Brexit: Political Milieu and Crime Motivated by Bias

• In Event: The Pervasive Effects of Hate Crime Offending

Abstract

Prior research showed that hate crimes tend to increase in the aftermath of terrorist attacks such as 9/11 and 7/7 in the U.S. and U.K. (Dish, Cavendish, and King, 2011; Hanes and Machin, 2014). Scant scholarly attention has been given to the influence of political environment on hate crimes in the wake of Brexit, however, and scientific research exploring whether hate crime increased significantly in the immediate aftermath of Brexit is almost nonexistent. This is surprising given that after Brexit the number of racially and religiously aggregated offences increased by 41% compared with the previous year (Home Office, 2016). The present research addresses these gaps by examining the temporal clustering of hate crime in the UK in the wake of Brexit. It, furthermore, examines the impact of immigration rates, economic conditions, and the strength of extreme right wing parties on the levels of hate crime before and after the EU referendum. I advance prior work by utilizing multiple data sources, including police forces, Electoral Commission, and Home Office. The results from time-series analyses indicate that the EU referendum preceded a sudden surge in racially and religiously motivated crime in the UK. I discuss the implications of these findings.

Author

• Sylwia Janina Piatkowska, Old Dominion University