STEREOTYPICAL OR NON-STEREOTYPICAL? : WHICH HATE CRIMES ARE EASIER TO CATEGORIZE?

Abstract: Hate crime is an umbrella concept where the motive is to violate an individual or group based on their ethnicity, skin color, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, or gender identity or expression. This study examined police reports from the year 2018, marked as hate crimes. The sample consisted of 8 cases of violent crimes containing, a completed interrogation, an identifiable hate motive and where the offense was made by either a majority offender on minority victim or a minority offender on minority victim. The study aimed to examine whether the police use stereotypes to enable quick and easy identification of an underlying motive. Athematic analysis was used to examine if stereotypes were being utilized and if any differences occurred between the handling of cases of majority-on-minority versus minority-on-minority. Two theoretical frameworks were used to understand the mechanism behind the use of stereotypes, and which victims who are assigned most sympathy from society and can thereby be defined as ideal victims of hate crime. The results indicated that the hate motive was expressed more explicitly in cases where the offender belonged to a majority group. These cases also contained more stereotypical traits, which could make it easier for law enforcement to recognize the hate motive. In the dominant part of the examined cases, both stereotypical and non-stereotypical traits were visible, indicating that law enforcement partly forgoes these stereotypes when identifying the hate motive. More training would be beneficial to stress the importance of a more detailed description of the hate motive in the report's criminal text - and how it determines the success of the investigation.