Introduction -- The framework of police decision-making in hate crime cases -- Integration and hate crime: the institutionalization of civil rights laws -- Investigation: detectives and the making of hate crime -- The difficulty of hate crime investigation -- Public culture and hate crime -- The decision to seek charges -- Prosecutors and the courts -- Conclusion -- Appendix: Research methodology: a peek behind the curtain
Summary
"Policing Hatred explores the intersection of race and law enforcement in the controversial area of hate crime. The nation's attention has recently been focused on high-profile hate crimes such as the dragging death of James Byrd and the torture-murder of Matthew Shepard. This book calls attention to the thousands of other individuals who each year are attacked because of their race, religion, or sexual orientation. The study of hate crimes challenges common assumptions regarding perpetrators and victims: most of the accused tend to be white, while most of their victims are not." "Policing Hatred is an in-depth ethnographic study of how hate crime law works in practice, from the perspective of those enforcing it. It examines the ways in which the police handle bias crimes, and the social impact of those efforts. Bell exposes the power that law enforcement personnel have to influence the social environment by showing how they determine whether an incident will be charged as a bias crime."--Jacket
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 217-221) and index
