A Culture of Prejudice? A Cross-national Examination of Youth Hate Crime Incidence

• In Event: Hate Groups and Other Macro-Level Influences on Hate Crimes

Abstract

Hate crime – crime motivated by prejudice towards the minority ‘other’ – sends a message to its victim and to others like them. Hate crime is not a rare event, and research suggests that most hate crime is motivated by racial or ethnic prejudice, and that a large proportion of these crimes are perpetrated by or committed against youth. But hate crime is not an inevitable result of prejudice. We argue that a country’s history of immigration, segregation and politico-cultural acceptance of diversity influences the dynamics of ethnically-motivated hate crime and that these macro-level factors trickle down from politics to playground, to influence the likelihood that the perceived threat of the young ‘other’ will be also violently resisted. We report on a cross-national study on the incidence of youth hate crime. Using self-report delinquency data from the International Self-Report Delinquency study (ISRD), we benchmark the incidence of youth hate crime across major world regions, and examine the macro-level impact of immigration history, inequalities, and political environment on rates of youth hate crime perpetration and victimisation.

Authors

• Kathryn Benier, Monash University

• Angela Higginson, Queensland University of Technology