ABSTRACT
During my doctoral research on the emergence of hate crime legislation I interviewed a number of campaign group activists who were working on improving the criminal justice response to hate crime victimisation. Many of these worked on one specific hate crime “strand” and were members of monitoring groups looking at racist, religious, homophobic, disablist or gendered crimes. However, one respondent worked independently and had been victimised herself in a violent attack in the street. She observed “I am disabled, gay and a woman. If I am targeted am I supposed to say which aspect was the most hurtful and damaging?” She was frustrated at a criminal justice response which would only allow her to tick one aspect of her identity as the potential cause of the attack and also at campaigners who were wedded to one aspect of identity in their lobbying efforts. This was not an uncommon opinion, with many also highlighting the competition between different charities and lobbying groups over resources, police attention and media coverage. What was clear was that hate crime policy had emerged through an identity politics which tended to oversimplify victim groups and did not necessarily take into account the diverse experiences of victims and the nuances of the harms that they might suffer.
