When Law and Hate Collide: Perspectives on Hate Crime

The project is funded by the Daphne III Programme of the European Union and is a collaboration of

• The Innovation in Society Unit within the Lancashire Law School at the University of Central Lancashire, United Kingdom, led by the projects Principle Investigator Mr Anthony Mark Cutter
• The Department of Philosophy, Linguistics and Theory of Science at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, led by Prof Christian Munthe
• The Institute of Special Needs Education within the Department of Education Sciences at the Goethe University Frankfurt, led by Prof Dr Michael Fingerle

The project seeks to answer a number of fundamental questions in order to address the overarching aim of the project that is
"To provide the European Parliament and the Commission with a working definition of Hate Crime and consensus policy/best practice guidelines in order to ensure all Member States of the Union offer the same legal and legislative certainty across the Union."

The University of Gothenburg team also includes post doc and research assistant David Brax and has as its main responsibility within the project to provide basic scientific, conceptual, philosophical and ethical considerations for the policy recommendations eventually submitted to the European Commission.

To achieve its ultimate aim, the project will be exploring a number of key questions such as:

• Does the concept of Hate Crime Really Exist?
• What is Hate Crime?
• How can it be defined?
• How far removed (if at all) is it from an aggravated crime is a Hate Crime?
• Do we need a Hate Crime Law?
• What groups of people should it cover
• Would a law violate any Human Rights?
• Do victims of Hate Crime Support a Hate Crime Law?
• Why do offenders commit Hate Crimes?
• Is Hate Crime already legislated against?

This will ultimately determine whether the European Union should intervene within Member State policy/legal frameworks to develop a minimum standard of protection against Hate Crime and if so how far reaching should this be.

This will be achieved through a number of traditional academic and other wider public engagement activities including

• A Modified Policy Delphi Study
• Focus Groups
• Semi Structured Interviews
• Online Survey
• Viral Video Activity
• Social Media Interactions

The project will then have a number of key landmark outputs which will naturally include the traditional reporting requirements but also

• The Philosophy of Hate Crime Anthology
• An Edited Volume of Symposium Presentations
• A fictional Monograph
• A number Radio Documentaries
• Social Media Activity
• Web based viral activity
• CPD Courses
• Online toolkits

You can follow the continuous public engagement work being done within the project via its Facebook page and its Twitter channel

Project homepage