ABSTRACT
On the evidence presented so far in this book, hate crime is clearly a complex issue. A lack of clarity surrounds aspects such as how to define and conceptualise the problem (chapter one), how it has come to be formally acknowledged, or not, as a contemporary socio-legal issue (chapter two), how much of it exists around the world (chapter three), who should be recognised as victims and what impacts it can have on those who experience it (chapter four), how and why the prejudice that lies within all of us can become the motivation for criminal behaviour (chapters five and six) and how we should respond to it both via the criminal justice system and through other preventive and reformative methods (chapters seven and eight). As such, I have alluded to areas of potential controversy, uncertainty and debate throughout each of the chapters that we have covered so far. In this chapter, however, we shall seek to draw all of these issues together in one place and question, as many people do, whether or not all of these complexities mean that, in reality, our subject is fatally flawed. Before we consider the views proffered by critics of hate crime, however, let us briefly revisit and consolidate the case for viewing hate crime as a distinct category of offending worthy of specific attention in its own right.
