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What is Measured Matters: The Value of Third Party Hate Crime Monitoring

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A Correction to this article was published on 21 December 2018

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Abstract

The appropriate recording of hate crime by state authorities (most usually by the police) has been recognized internationally as important to addressing hate crime. However, little scholarly attention has been paid to the role played by civil society in monitoring hate crime. This article will elaborate a range of purposes fulfilled by civil society organisations in collecting data on the extent and motivations of hate crime occurring in a given jurisdiction. Drawing on in-depth interviews with civil society organisations engaged in conducting third party monitoring of hate crime in one such jurisdiction, we will document the manner in which such monitoring systems (a) provide a means of reporting hate crime; (b) provide minority communities a means of reporting hate crime; (c) serve as a comparator to potentially unrepresentative official statistics where these are collected; (d) provide an evidence base for legislative change; and (e) provide a platform to affirm victims’ naming of their experiences as hate crimes. This internationally transferable taxonomy of the functions of civil society monitoring systems, is complemented by additional insights into the particular significance of such mechanisms in jurisdictions in which the construct of hate crime is not acknowledged in the justice system. On a critical note, the article will identify victim support as a natural extension of hate crime recording systems, noting that civil society organisations collecting data on hate crime in Ireland do not fulfil this remit. In summary, we argue for the value of civil society hate crime reporting systems as a source of challenge to otherwise hegemonic state constructions of jurisdictional hate crime. We advocate for international bodies to incorporate the financial support of civil society organisations into their monitoring functions on this basis.

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Change history

  • 21 December 2018

    The original version of this article unfortunately contained a mistake. The name "Emma MacIntosh" should be corrected to "Emma Marie MacIntosh".

Notes

  1. Member States where CSOs operate independently of law enforcement agencies in the recording and collection of data on hate crime include; Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Denmark, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia.

  2. As is the case in Greece See: Lazaridis, G and Veikou, M. (2016) ‘The rise of the far right in Greece and opposition to ‘othering’, hate speech, and crime by civil and civic organizations’, Journal of Civil Society, 13:1, 1–17

  3. Colloquially referred to as an organisation as ‘the Gards’ or ‘the gardaí’ and individually as ‘garda’.

  4. GLEN is currently in the process of being wound up. This occurred after the completion of the research associated with this project.

  5. The National Steering Group Against Hate Crime is a coalition of civil society organisations, academics and researchers working together to promote meaningful reform of law, policy and practice, as it relates to hate crime in Ireland.

  6. Modus Operandi

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Law, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Jennifer Schweppe

  2. Department of Sociology, University of Limerick, Limerick, Ireland

    Amanda Haynes

  3. Schulich School of Law, Dalhousie University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada

    Emma Marie MacIntosh

Authors
  1. Jennifer Schweppe
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  2. Amanda Haynes
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  3. Emma Marie MacIntosh
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Correspondence to Jennifer Schweppe.

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The original version of this article was revised: The name "Emma MacIntosh" should be corrected to "Emma Marie MacIntosh

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Schweppe, J., Haynes, A. & MacIntosh, E.M. What is Measured Matters: The Value of Third Party Hate Crime Monitoring. Eur J Crim Policy Res 26, 39–59 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10610-018-9403-4

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