Preventing Hate Crime: A Holistic Approach

Hate crimes are acts of crime motivated by bias or hatred against certain categories of people, such as religious, racial, or sexual minorities or people with disabilities. General principles of crime prevention may also work against hate crimes. In this paper I will apply a generic model of crime prevention, discussing nine preventive mechanisms and measures that may be applied to activate these mechanisms to reduce hate crimes. Preventive mechanisms are simple theoretical explanations of how a measure is causing an effect, in this case, reducing hate crimes. Measures are the means or methods implemented to activate a mechanism to achieve a specific outcome. A measure is what we do; the corresponding mechanism is how it works. The nine preventive mechanisms, applied to hate crime, are: 1) Building normative barriers against hate crime; 2) Reducing recruitment to hate groups and activities; 3) Deterring hate crimes; 4) Disrupting hate crimes; 5) Incapacitation of perpetrators of hate crime; 6) Protecting vulnerable targets of hate crime; 7) Reducing harm from hate crime; 8) Reducing rewards from hate crime; 9) Exit and rehabilitation from hate crime. A preventive strategy should be based on a holistic approach with a broad comprehensive range of interventions. This will involve a multitude of preventive actors with different measures at their disposal. Such a comprehensive approach can activate a broad range of preventive mechanisms that together can reduce hate crime and take well care of the victims.