The 12 October local government elections in the Republic of Albania marked further progress towards compliance with OSCE, Council of Europe and other international commitments and standards for democratic elections. However, shortcomings in a number of areas remain to be addressed ahead of the next parliamentary elections, particularly in relation to voter lists, which continue to be problematic.

Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe

This is a book review of Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics, by James Jacob and Kimberly Potter (Oxford University Press, 2000).

Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics

This article examines the symbolic function of hate crime law. By challenging the norms that sustain and promote prejudice, hate crime law seeks to contribute to claims for social justice on behalf of victim groups. This symbolic function cannot be achieved by legal rules alone. Drawing upon theories of emotional thinking, the article argues that the moral work of hate crime laws is dependent upon the capacity of victim groups to engender compassionate thinking that helps reconfigure perceptions of them as dangerous, illegitimate or inferior Others. This analysis seeks to contribute to our understanding of the processes through which some minority communities fall short of the image of ideal victims capable of contributing to the moral claim embedded in hate crime law.

The symbolic purpose of hate crime law: Ideal victims and emotion:

Despite the pitfalls identified in previous critiques of the evidence-based practice movement in education, health, medicine and social care, recent years have witnessed its spread to the realm of policing. This article considers the rise of evidence-based policy and practice as a dominant discourse in policing in the UK, and the implications this has for social scientists conducting research in this area, and for police officers and staff. Social scientists conducting research with police must consider organisational factors impacting upon police work, as well as the wider political agendas which constrain it – in this case, the ways in which the adoption of evidence-based policing and the related ‘gold standard’ used to evaluate research act as a ‘technology of power’ to shape the nature of policing/research. The discussion draws on semi-structured interviews conducted with police officers and staff from police forces in England.

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Policing Research and the Rise of the 'Evidence-Base': Police Officer and Staff Understandings of Research, its Implementation and 'What Works'

The empirical genesis for this novel inter-disciplinary dissertation was the devastating global financial crisis. A separate and simultaneous Irish crisis was located in the banking sector. The financial market domain, based in its own unique set of norms, and replete with shifting risk concerns and a criminogenic nature, exceeded the authorisations and boundaries of the regulatory control domain with disastrous results. These crises revealed market actor conduct control issues including: questionable risk management practices; fraudulent behaviour; breaches of trust; business culture concerns; governance, control system and regulatory failure; business disclosure and transparency inadequacies; ethical concerns including conflicts of interest; and, ineffectual sanctioning. They presented as both opportunity and motivational driver for the public financial regulatory reform agenda, a socially significant issue. The chosen research lens was the financial regulatory police pairing of criminal and administrative sanctioning, where the prime research issue was coordinated interplay strategy reform, targeted to improve market actor compliance. Three shifting paradigms, those of the financial markets and their two financial regulatory coercive control components, the criminal law and regulation, are the backdrop to the research interrogation. Each paradigm reflects a discrete normative system, and postcrisis each has not settled and is still shifting. Historically, they simultaneously developed and cross-fed. Hobbes and his contemporary Locke theorised contractarianism; the rule of law; and, political autonomy which the state took up from the market and re-branded as laissez faire. For modern democracy, Habermas has recognised that autonomy is the normative key with restriction secondary. Polanyi has argued that restriction was a societal countermovement which established control

Irish financial regulatory enforcement: reforming the criminal law and administrative sanction interplay strategy

This book brings together internationally acclaimed scholars with researchers, policy makers and practitioners from across the world to critically scrutinize the concept of hate crime as a global phenomenon. The book seeks to examine whether hate crime can, or should, be conceptualized within an international framework and if so how this might be achieved. The book has split into three parts: Part I of this book examines the global dynamics of hate. It is here that our contributors begin to analyse whether hate crime can be defined globally, whether universal principles can be applied to the phenomenon, how hatred is spread, and how it impacts upon our global society. Part II moves beyond the broader questions of globalization to jurisdictional examples of how globalization impacts upon our understanding of, as well as our responses to, hate crime. It is here that the book explores in greater detail what is happening around the world and how the international concepts of hate crime are being operationalized locally. The aim of this part of the book is to draw out the themes of globalization and internationalization that are relevant to hate crime, as evidenced by a number of jurisdictions from Europe (West and East), the US, Asia, and Africa. Part III completes the book by examining the different ways in which hate speech and hate crime are being combated globally. International law, internet regulation, and the use of restorative practices are evaluated as methods of addressing hate-based conflict. The analyses found here draw from existing frameworks as well as exploring normative standards for future international efforts.

The globalization of hate: internationalizing hate crime?

Legislatures worldwide experience the same problem in drafting or amending hate crimes statutes: How is it possible to discriminate between victim groups, and which groups are worthy of legislative protection? This article explores some of the experiences of legislatures, highlighting the political inconsistencies which go on to shape the legal system. It focusses on the experience of a number of common law jurisdictions, and seeks to establish a normative platform from which hate crimes statutes can be based, drawing on the legislative experiences of the United States. This platform draws on two other areas of law, particularly the criminal defence of provocation and equality legislation, and shows that the determination of victim groups for hate crimes legislation need not be the politically charged, discriminatory, and exclusionary process that it is today.

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Jennifer Schweppe

Papers

The globalization of hate: internationalizing hate crime?

Defining Characteristics and Politicising Victims: A Legal Perspective

A life free from fear: legislating for hate crime in Ireland: An NGO perspective

Lifecycle of a hate crime: comparative report

Defining Characteristics and Politicising Victims: A Legal Perspective