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Tackling Hate Crime in Coventry

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Tackling Hate Crime in Coventry us/Disability/Homophobic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffiti and Posters/Offensive Mail/Racist/Religious/Disability/Homoph obic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffit us/Disability/Homophobic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffiti and Posters/Offensive Mail/Racist/Religious/Disability/Homoph obic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffit us/Disability/Homophobic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffiti and Posters/Offensive Mail/Racist/Religious/Disability/Homoph obic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffit us/Disability/Homophobic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffiti and Posters/Offensive Mail/Racist/Religious/Disability/Homoph obic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffit us/Disability/Homophobic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffiti and Posters/Offensive Mail/Racist/Religious/Disability/Homoph obic/Transphobic/Verbal Abuse/Graffit Tackling Hate Crime in Coventry Resource guide for front line practicioners Tackling Hate Crime in Coventry: Resource Guide for Front Line Practitioners Coventry Hate Crime Reduction Partnership Tackling hate crime in Coventry: Resource for front line practitioners Acknowledgements: Coventry Hate Crimes Reduction Partnership would like to thank Coventry New Deal for Communities (NDC) for providing the funding for this project. The funding was specifically designed to provide training and resources on hate crimes to support front line staff working within the NDC area of Wood End. This guide follows on from the training and consultation that was done with a wide range of front line professionals in the area. The guide has been co-authored by: Dr Gurnam Singh: Applied Research Group in Social Inclusion and Social Care, Coventry University and, Alison Quigley: Hate Crimes Reduction Officer, Coventry City Council. Contact details: For copies or further details about this guide or any other matters associated with hate crime in Coventry please contact: The Hate Crime Reduction Officer, Community Safety Team Coventry City Council Council House, Earl Street, Coventry, CV1 5RR Tel: 024 7683 2118 Emergency/Out of hours: 024 7683 2222 Tackling Hate Crime in Coventry: Resource Guide for Front Line Practitioners Coventry Hate Crime Reduction Partnership Hate crime poetry Produced by children at Bishop Ullathorne School, Coventry H is for Harassment, physical and verbal A is for assault, racially aggravated assault T is for trust, believe in justice E is for ethnic minorities, origins, history, language and culture C is for communication, tell someone R is for racism, ranging from verbal abuse to murder I is for intimidation, don’t let them threaten you M is for my life, no one elses E is for educate, teach people about Hate Crime ---------------------- Hate Crime is bad, it makes you sad, especially to the Jewish lad. People suffer hate crime today, black, white, straight or gay I'm busting this rhyme to stop hate crime. All the gangsters with the graffiti, drugs and alcohol, crack and martini. I'm busting this rhyme to stop hate crime All the homies on the street, giving abuse all this week. All the hustlers give it cheek Come on people, come out and speak We is busting this rhyme to stop hate crime ----------------------------------------------- Why is there war between our brothers? Why do old people look down at young mothers? Different people from different places being bullied because of the colour of their faces! What has happened to the world these days. Why can’t no-one respect each others ways? We need to make a world that’s free, peaceful, fair and full of harmony! From homophobia, religion and disability Everyone's different so we should just let them be!! Tackling Hate Crime in Coventry: Resource Guide for Front Line Practitioners Coventry Hate Crime Reduction Partnership Tackling hate crime in Coventry: Contents page Section 1: Introduction to the Resource Guide Section 2: Useful Contacts and Reporting Centres Section 3: The Current Legal Position and Definitions Section 4: Understanding Hate and Hate Crime Section 5: General Features and Types of Hate Crime Section 6: Understanding and Tackling Extremist Hate Groups Section 7: The Language and Symbols of Hate Section 8: Responding to Hate Incidents Section 9: Preventing Hate Crime Section 10: Resources Section Online hate Guidelines for anti-hate training Web based resources Video triggers (CD) and guidance notes PDF files (CD) Tackling Hate Crime in Coventry: Resource Guide for Front Line Practitioners Coventry Hate Crime Reduction Partnership Section 1: Introduction to your resource guide On 30th July 2005 Anthony Walker a peace loving, bright Anybody can potentially be a perpetrator or victim of hate 18 year old British student of African descent from Huyton crime. Yet, despite legislative changes and increasing in Merseyside was murdered in a racially motivated hate awareness of the problem, victims still lack confidence to crime by Michael Barton, and his cousin Paul Taylor, two report their experiences. In particular, if you belong to an white young people from the same area. Anthony was ethnic or religious minority, have a disability, are waiting for a bus with his white girlfriend Louise homosexual or transgender or belong to a refugee or Thompson and his cousin. They were racially abused by a asylum seeker community, your chances of being a victim hooded man. To avoid any conflict, they walked to another of hate crime is very high. bus stop when they were attacked. Anthony’s girlfriend and cousin ran to get help, and returned to find him in a Reporting and tackling hate crime should not be left to the pool of blood sustained from a head injury. He was taken victims. Since we all share the society we live in, we all to hospital, but died there six hours later. Anthony Walker have a responsibility to confront and eradicate hate crime. was killed with a blow to the head from an ice axe, which Front line professionals in particular have powers was found at the scene of the crime. This brutal hate crime entrusted on them by citizens and are therefore morally sent shock waves in the local community and throughout even more obliged to confront the oppression associated the country. with hate. Sadly, the murder of Anthony Walker represents just a tip But hate crime cannot be tackled by a few individuals; it of the iceberg. The first ever International Hate Crime requires a collective, multi-professional approach. It Survey carried out by Human Rights First in 2007 reported requires citizens from all communities to understand that a ‘rising tide of hate crime’ throughout Europe and North ultimately hate crimes serve nobody, victim or perpetrator. America (www.humanrightsfirst.org ). While incidents such It requires insight, skill and commitment but it also as the murder of Anthony Walker bring the issue of hate requires passion and understanding for victims and crime to public attention, the majority of hate crime go perpetrators. unreported. Hate crime dehumanise both victims and perpetrators. For Hate incidents can range from acts that aren’t illegal at all, victims, as well as providing security in the short term, to relatively minor offences, to the most serious of crime, professionals need to consider the longer term harm to up to and including murder. Perpetrators of hate crimes their health and wellbeing. They will need to work together always target individuals who stand out because of their to develop services that can rebuild confidence, self real or imagined ethnicity, race, nationality, religion, sexual esteem and a sense of belonging. orientation or disability and any combination of these. Members from the same group as perpetrators can and For perpetrators, whilst punitive measures such as ‘locking often are targeted by them simply because of their them up’, placing them on an injunction, evicting them association with a target group. from a property and so on might offer short term solutions, in the long term there must be opportunities for Although hate crime tend to be targeted at certain them to regain their sense of belonging and of civic minority groups, they can impact the whole population responsibility. Hence, professionals need to think and their effect is to create fear, division and conflict within creatively about working with perpetrators, especially society. The aim of the perpetrators of hate is simply to young people who may themselves be victims of violence deny the human rights of their targets i.e. their right to life, and abuse. liberty and security, freedom from exploitation, violence and abuse, protection of property and to liberty of movement. Tackling Hate Crime in Coventry: Resource Guide for Front Line Practitioners Coventry Hate Crime Reduction Partnership Hate crime are not only illegal; they are morally and Contents socially incompatible with modern democratic societies Tackling hate crime requires a range of responses. like ours. Clearly, to expect the human emotion associated As illustrated in the diagram, strategies aimed at with being hated to be expunged is unrealistic. Yet, there protecting victims need to be complemented with those is every reason to believe and expect that nobody has the that address issues of prevention. Moreover, good right to use physical and/or psychological violence intelligence gathering is needed to secure prosecution, against another because they are in some way different. but rehabilitative and restorative justice is important in And therefore, to be successful, anti –hate crime enabling perpetrators to show penance, to change and strategies need to operate at all levels, legal, moral, social go some way to repairing
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