seventeen - Restorative approaches to working with hate crime offenders

Summary

Introduction

For some considerable time now, legislatures across the Western world have sought to respond to the proliferation of hate crimes by increasing the punishments of offenders. The use of penalty enhancements seems intuitive given the severity of harms caused by hate-motivated offences (Iganski, 2008; Smith et al, 2012). The criminalisation of hate also promotes an important symbolic message to society that hostilities demonstrated towards racial, religious, sexual orientation, disability and transgender groups (among others) are wholly unacceptable (Iganski, 1999). Yet while a punitive approach to tackling hate offenders has its merits, there are several limitations to this approach that require attention. First, the law does little to support the healing of hate victims – beyond perhaps appeasing a visceral desire for an offender to receive his ‘just deserts’ (Dixon and Gadd, 2006). Furthermore, it can be argued that the punishment and labelling of offenders as ‘hate offenders’ does little to challenge individuals’ hate-motivated behaviours (Jacobs and Potter, 1998; Dixon and Gadd, 2006). In fact, some academics have gone so far as to suggest that hate crime laws may actually antagonise (would-be) offenders who see certain groups as receiving unequal protection from the state (Jacobs and Potter, 1998).

The lack of victim support and offender edification offered by retributive hate crime laws suggests that a new or additional approach is needed when tackling hate-motivated offences (Burney, 2003: 36; Perry, 2003: 44). With this in mind, a growing number of academics have begun to explore the effectiveness of using a restorative approach to tackling the phenomenon (see, Shenk, 2001; Umbreit et al, 2002; Gavrielides, 2007; Walters and Hoyle, 2010; 2012). This chapter adds to the small but growing knowledge base on restorative justice (RJ) for hate crime by focusing on the potential benefits that restorative practices may yield in relation to transforming the behaviours of hate crime offenders. Drawing on empirical research undertaken for the author's doctorate, the chapter explores the ways in which restorative practices have been used to challenge effectively and modify the hate-motivated behaviours of offenders, while simultaneously protecting participants against re-victimisation (Walters, 2012a).