sixteen - Understanding how ‘hate’ hurts: a case study of working with offenders and potential offenders

Summary

All crimes leave a hurtful residue for the victims. But some crimes inflict more pain than others. This is not just or always even a matter of physical pain. Physical assaults against the body are relatively few considering all the different crimes committed. It is the rather more frequent emotional wounds to the hearts and minds of victims left behind after the event. Victims try in different ways to heal these wounds. For their part, many offenders do not foresee the extent of the injuries they cause. A few offenders do of course act intentionally to inflict particular hurts. But in many instances offenders act on impulse without much forethought. And in many other instances their acts are expressive reactions to situations in which they find themselves and in which they lash out when they feel they have been wronged.

In jurisdictions where verbal expressions can constitute criminal acts, such as in the United Kingdom, these types of offences account for a majority of so-called ‘hate crimes’: so called, because it is rare that offenders truly hate their victims. Most ‘hate crime’ scholars would agree that. Accepting that the matter is rather more complex than the perpetrators of ‘hate crime’ simply hating their victims opens-up the potential for working with offenders to prevent damage they might inflict on a future occasion. Some practitioners working to rehabilitate ‘hate crime’ offenders work on the principle that if empathy for the victim can be engendered within the perpetrator's own heart and mind, if they can be brought to appreciate the full consequence of their actions, then those who do not truly ‘hate’ might think twice before acting again in the way they had done so before. And likewise if potential perpetrators can be brought to understand the full consequences of what they might do, then they too might think twice before they do it. This chapter unfolds the development of the type of understanding about the hurts of ‘hate crime’ that is used in working with offenders and potential perpetrators. Two case studies are offered from evaluations of projects in the north west of England to illustrate how understanding about the hurts of ‘hate crime’ can be used in working with offenders and potential offenders.