ABSTRACT
Hate crime' provides a label to denounce the violation of one's right to be free from hostility, animosity and intimidation based on one's membership of a particular group or association with a particular identity category. This hostility is experienced differently within and between victim groups. Police have responded to hate crimes as detached incidents, without recognising the impact of the broader social contexts on the experiences of communities that are most vulnerable to targeted violence. Hate crime strategies have a natural home within victim commands, which can assist in developing a 'whole of organisation' response to the problem. Under-reporting is a challenge both for law enforcement agencies that have recently begun to recognise hate crime and for those that have a long history of initiatives in this area. An operational challenge in policing of hate crime, and one which is intimately connected to recording practices, lies in identifying the kinds of criminal conduct that amount to a prejudice motivated crime.
