ABSTRACT
Barbara Perry (2001) suggests that there are few endeavours so frustrating as trying to estimate and establish the extent of hate crime. Part of the reason for this, as we saw in chapter one, is that hate crime is essentially a social construct and that the size of the problem depends almost entirely on how we define and conceptualise it (as illustrated by Jacobs and Potter’s, 1998, model) which of course will vary from place to place, and from time to time. As such, the geography of where hate crime is occurring, and how much of it is occurring in any given location, presents a further interesting but complicated avenue for exploration. Nevertheless, various attempts have been made both at domestic and
international levels, by a range of bodies, to measure the extent and nature of the hate crime ‘problem’ in different parts of the world. One of the key sources of information of this type is published annually by the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE). By using the 2011 and 2012 OSCE reports (utilising the two allows for occasional gaps in the data in one or the other to be filled thereby providing a more holistic overview) as a framework to examine the international geography of ‘hate’, and by drawing upon wider information derived from other relevant national and international organisations, this chapter will, as far as is possible, present an overview of the international hate crime picture.
