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Title
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Essays on causes of hate crime : the effects of the E.U. Referendum, COVID-19, and Black Lives Matter on hate crime
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Author
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Abstract
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| Over the recent years the EU referendum in the UK and global shocks such as the COVID-19 pandemic and 2020 Black Lives Matter protests have raised the saliency of racial or ethnic minority groups. This thesis looks at how these events impacted racial hate crime, including the magnitude and persistence of the shocks and the mechanisms driving the observed changes. With this information policy makers will better be able to prevent or respond to hate crime shocks. Hate crime is of particular concern to society due to the detrimental effects on the direct victim and the larger targeted community, such as high mental health costs, reduced assimilation, and changes in appearance and mobility to prevent future victimization. The first chapter studies the effect of the EU Referendum on racial and religious hate crime in England and Wales. We find that hate crime increased by 20 percent only in June 2016. The shock, however, was temporary due to the announcement of an increase in sentencing and public outcry to the reported hate crime spike. In Chapter 2, the effect of the COVID-19 pandemic on hate crime in the UK is analyzed. Here we find a persistent increase in hate crime against East Asians in 2020 beginning with the first UK COVID cases. Hate crimes against other ethnic groups increased following the end of the first national lockdown. Lockdown appears to be the driving force as the shock was predominately in London. Chapter 3 examines the effect of the 2020 Black Lives Matter protests on racial hate crime in the US. Immediately following the death of George Floyd there was a large and persistent increase in anti-Black and anti-White hate crime. The spread of the protests to areas without a history of BLM protests drove the increase in hate crime as did the saliency of police violence against protestors and opposition to BLM. The public response to the events and resultant shocks seems to be a critical determinant of the level and duration of the hate crime increase. With Brexit there was a consensus among those with authority across the political spectrum and a clear denouncement of hate crime compounded with an increase in criminal justice consequences. In comparison, race played an enduring and contentious role in the latter two events which sustained a long-lasting hate crime surge. This thesis has two important implications for future research on hate crime. First, just as non-biased crime, hate crime is at least partially determined by society and therefore there is scope for public policy as an instrument to reduce its occurrence. Finally, reliable and rich hate crime data from more countries is required to have a deeper understanding of the causes of hate crime and how to prevent it. |
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Language
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English
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Publication
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Antwerp
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University of Antwerp, Faculty of Business and Economics
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2023
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Volume/pages
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xii, 242 p.
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Note
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Vujić, S. [Supervisor]
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James, J. [Supervisor]
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Full text (open access)
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