three - Reshaping hate crime policy and practice: lessons from a grassroots campaign

Summary

Introduction

Sylvia Lancaster is the founder of the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, a campaigning charitable organisation formed in the wake of her daughter Sophie's tragic murder in 2007. Sophie (20) had been walking home on the night of 10 August of that year in the town of Bacup, Lancashire, with her boyfriend Robert Maltby (21), when they fell into conversation with a group of local teenagers. After an initially amicable chat, and without any provocation, some members of that group viciously attacked Robert. As Sophie went to his aid, by trying to protect him from the blows and kicks that were raining down on him, she too was assaulted. When paramedics eventually arrived at the scene they found the victims lying side-by-side, unconscious and covered in blood. Both were in a coma and, while Robert recovered enough to be able to leave hospital about two weeks later, Sophie died as a result of the injuries she suffered (Chakraborti and Garland, 2009; Smyth, 2010).

At the trial of the assailants at Preston Crown Court it became clear that the only apparent motive for the attack was that the accused had taken exception to the ‘alternative’ appearance of Sophie and Robert, who had for a number of years dressed in a strikingly different style, which had led the press to describe them as ‘goths’ (although they did not necessarily define themselves in that way). Presciently, the presiding judge at the trial, Judge Anthony Russell QC, labelled the assault a ‘hate crime’, something that, as is mentioned below, Sophie's mother Sylvia felt it had been from the beginning.

In the aftermath of Sophie's murder Sylvia decided to set up an organisation, the Sophie Lancaster Foundation, in her daughter's name. Since its inception the Foundation has had two broad aims: (i) to challenge prejudice in all its forms by delivering talks and developing educational programmes and packages, aimed mainly at young people, that promote understanding and tolerance of ‘difference’; and (ii) to get assaults and harassment of those who are members of ‘alternative’ subcultures officially recognised as ‘hate crimes’ by the criminal justice system.