Who Serves Time for Hate? A Criminal Career Perspective of those Imprisoned for Hate Crime

• In Event: Developmental and Life-course Approaches to the Examination of Offending

Abstract

Scholarly interest in hate crime has increased substantially, but there are very few studies examining the perpetrators of hate crime. This study is the first to use police administrative records to provide a descriptive account of the demographic and criminal history of those serving time in prison for committing hate crime. The results suggested that, similar to non-hate crime offenders, those who served time for hate crimes had prolific criminal careers, committing a wide range and number of different types of offenses. When those who committed a violent hate crime were compared to those who committed a general violent offense, hate crime offenders were found to be significantly older, and to have committed a significantly greater number previous offences. Linked to this, violent hate crime offenders had more previous court appearances and previous imprisonments. These findings suggest that hate crime offenders are unlikely to be specialists in hate crime, but may in fact be very prolific offenders, committing hate crime at random over the course of long criminal careers. These findings call into question the value of interventions specifically designed for hate crime offenders. Instead interventions for violent hate crime offenders should be based on the same evidence-based interventions that exist for violent offenders with the added knowledge that hate crime offenders are particularly prolific.

Authors

• Darrick Jolliffe, University of Greenwich

• David Farrington, Cambridge University