BSC Hate Crime Conference: ‘TRANSforming the Narrative: Challenging Transphobic Hate Crime’ – Bournemouth University 22 June 2023

Conference Programme
General Information

Hate Crime Network Chair Introduction

Keynote – Jack Lopez PPT Presentation
Keynote – Jack Lopez Text

Panel 1 – CPS Wessex
Panel 1 – Dorset Police

Panel 2 – Space Youth Project
Panel 2 – Maximillian Mustafa-Holzapfel

Panel 3 – Gina Gwenffrewi
Panel 3 – Katie McBride

Blogs

Supporting refugees within the hotel environment

Dr Amy Clarke

I have spent the last eight years working with new migrant communities and refugees in England, centring their everyday lived realities that are often over-looked, and understanding their experiences of hostility, exclusion and belonging. This work, and the wider activities I undertake as part of the Centre for Hate Studies at the University of Leicester, has led me to develop meaningful relationships with many community partners that support residents from ethnic minority backgrounds and newly arrived refugees in various ways.

For the last six months I have led an interdisciplinary team of academics including linguists, psychologists, criminologists and academics with expertise in politics and international relations, from the University of Leicester. We are working with Afghan refugees living in a hotel in central Leicester, and the staff and volunteers involved in the Bright Path Futures (BPF) programme. In the summer of 2021, BPF launched a new and novel refugee-led language and wellbeing support programme that is currently being facilitated within hotels in, and around, the city of Leicester. Our ongoing project is exploring the refugees’ general experiences of hotel life and the impacts of the BPF programme on their wellbeing, mental health and feelings of belonging.

In this blog I reflect on why co-produced programmes like BPF are so important and have the potential to make a significant difference to new arrivals’ cultural adjustment. I will also highlight the complex and ongoing challenges that come with facilitating these programmes, especially within hotel environments.

In response to the arrival of new Afghan refugees to Leicester in 2021, BPF began work in recognition that the newly arrived are under-supported, isolated, and typically living with their families in cramped and unfamiliar environments[1]. In particular, BPF work with Afghan women who they observed were especially isolated, rarely left their hotel rooms, and typically lacked the confidence and social capital to access other forms of support. One of the most important aspects of the BPF programme is that it provides training for women from within the communities to run the classes. These spaces provide them with a social outlet that they otherwise would not have. Here, they are able to establish social bonds within the hotel that will hopefully benefit them when they move into the wider community.  

However, despite the overwhelming potential and clear need for programmes like BPF, there are a number of considerable challenges that we have observed so far and I reflect on three of the most pressing here – although there are many more.

Firstly, programmes like BPF are rarely sustainable without long-term funding. The refugee teachers are paid on an ad hoc basis and their positions are highly precarious. Due to the unstable nature of funding for many small charities and community interest groups, these programmes often rely on the goodwill of individuals to run classes voluntarily while the programme remains essentially unfunded. This business model is exhausting for staff but also confusing and distressing for refugees who benefit from the support they receive and worry that it will disappear at a moment’s notice. This approach also requires a significant amount of emotional labour from teachers who often struggle with feelings of duty and powerlessness. Programmes like BPF develop close, and meaningful relationships with refugees and this places them in a unique position to support the newly arrived families, independently and in addition to, more formal support offered by local authorities. A more coherent and joined-up approach to support is much needed, and requires investment at both national and regional levels.

Secondly, social tensions that exist within and outside of the hotel have impacted the refugee residents, hotel staff and the local community. These tensions have sometimes escalated into verbal and physical fights. Many families in the hotel have been staying in the hotel for nearly 18 months, in cramped conditions, with inadequate access to legal and health care services and other basic necessities[2]. Unsurprisingly, therefore, interpersonal relationships between some residents and hotel staff have become fraught. There have also been concerns raised about the growing tensions between the refugees and local residents from the city which has resulted in extra security being placed in and around the hotel for the refugees’ protection. Elsewhere in the wider county, hotels housing refugees in more rural, affluent and predominantly White areas have received considerable backlash from local residents who are against their stay[3]. Such conditions have exacerbated existing issues, and for some, this has limited the progress and ongoing benefits of the BPF programme.    

Thirdly, we have found that any sense of progress that BPF has made in building a sense of community for the refugee families in the hotel, and aiding their adjustment to their new environment, is undermined when the refugees are suddenly relocated out of the city. Recently, the Home Office informed the refugee families whom we work with that they would be moved. They were not given a destination, only told that they would receive 48 hours’ notice, and are unlikely to remain in Leicester. The families have expressed their desire to stay in the area as they have begun to settle in the city with a highly diverse population. Their children, they tell us, are happy and doing well in school. Some have only just begun treatment for ongoing health problems that will discontinue once they move. This latest stage of destabilisation has negatively affected the mental and physical health of many of the women whom we work with, who now find it impossible and somewhat futile to continue with the BPF programme.

There have been multiple pledges by the Government over the past year to discontinue using hotels to accommodate refugees, particularly following the revelation in January 2023 that over 200 unaccompanied children have gone missing from hotels[4]. However, thousands of refugees continue to live in hotels nationwide with very little support or knowledge about their future. With social housing scarce, and job opportunities so limited for many newly arrived refugees, private hotels continue to house refugees, increasingly in rural and predominantly White areas[5]. As such, it is essential to reflect on how well prepared (or not) these hotel management teams are to safely and sensitively support the marginalised and vulnerable groups they are accommodating, often for prolonged periods of time. It is also vital to consider the long-term implications of such instability on refugee families and reduce harm wherever possible.

Exploring the benefits of LGBT-representative mock-juries in transphobic hate crimes. Amrik Singh, PhD Candidate at Bournemouth University. 

Transphobia is a fear and/or hatred of people that are transgender, i.e. of people that identify as a different gender to the gender assigned to them at birth.  Transphobia can manifest as stigma, discrimination, harassment, victimisation and/or violence in transphobic hate crimes (Bandini & Maggi, 2014). In addition, aside from hate crimes, there are hate incidents which fall just below the threshold of criminality. Such micro-aggressions are defined as common verbal, behavioural or environmental indignities, intentional or un-intentional communicating hostile, derogatory or negative slights and insults toward members of oppressed groups (Nadal & Mendoza, 2014). They constitute the everyday, often normalised, manifestations of hostility experienced by members of minority groups, where their sheer frequency and ubiquity makes them just as harmful as hate crimes if not more so (Perry, 2009). 

UK statistics have shown that while all types of crimes against transgender persons have been increasing, conviction rates have continued to fall (Yeung, 2016). The Law Commission (LC, 2020) recently proposed extending aggravated offences to the characteristics of disability, sexual-orientation and transgender, despite the significantly lower conviction rates compared to their base offence. In 2018, for example, the conviction ratio for racially / religiously aggravated assault was 51% compared to 85% for assault.  

The Law Commission considered the maximum sentences for aggravated offences to be disproportionately high compared to the maximum sentences for the corresponding base offences (e.g. 24-months for aggravated common assault compared to 6-months for common assault). The fact the average custodial sentences in 2018 for base offences were actually very similar to the average sentences for aggravated offences (LC, 2020), shows the disproportionately high sentence maxima for aggravated offences are un-necessary. This is important as previous mock-jury research has shown that sentence severity can result in lower conviction rates (Lundrigan, 2018).

My PhD project and in particular study 1 will initially explore for the first time, how much lower the conviction rate could be for transphobic aggravated common assault compared to common assault, and whether this is due to sentence severity or mock-juror stigma towards the transgender victim. In line with a pragmatic methodology this research will also test possible solutions to the problem of low conviction rates i.e. the impact of (i) more proportionate and shorter sentence maxima and (ii) the impact of an LGBT-representative mock-jury on conviction rates.  We expect that the sentence severity associated with aggravated offences will result in mock-jurors exhibiting acquittal bias and delivering lower conviction rates, but for this to be partially off-set in the LGBT-representative mock-jury groups.  

Racially-representative heterogeneous juries have been shown to deliver fairer judgments (e.g. in cases where the defendant is Black) compared to all-white, homogenous juries (Anwar et al., 2012). Public stigma towards LGBT people is highest towards transgender people (Hyde et al., 2013; Ringger, 2021) and when members of the public are randomly selected for jury service, public stigma can manifest as institutional stigma. Hatzenbuehler (2016) defined institutional stigma as unjust laws, policies and practices that deny, or fail to protect, the equal rights of minorities. Institutional stigma has been posited as both the source of stigma production and one of the leading causes of hate crimes (Perry, 2001). In mock jury studies, transgender stigma has been shown to impact unfairly on verdicts (Noble, 2019). Inter-group contact with gay individuals has been shown to reduce prejudice towards transgender people (Hoffarth & Hodson, 2018) and to be the most effective prejudice reduction intervention (Pettigrew & Tropp, 2013), hence we expect fairer verdicts in our LGBT-representative mock-jury groups. 

Finally, past mock-jury research has also shown that the Jury Foreperson can exert more influence on the jury, than other jurors (Foley & Pigott, 1997).  Furthermore, analysis of archived records show that the Jury Foreperson is most often a heterosexual male, ideally with previous jury experience and of relatively high socio-economic status. The tradition of judges and juries selecting such jury forepersons could also impact on conviction rates as heterosexual, cisgender males tend to be more homophobic and transphobic than their female counterparts (Norton & Herek, 2013) and transgender people are often also considered to be homosexual (van Anders, 2015). This research will uniquely compare the impact of pro-defendant and pro-victim heterosexual and homosexual co-mock jurors and jury forepersons to explore any differences in their impact on other mock-jurors’ decisions. 

This research will employ a mixed methods approach, where the first three studies will be quantitative, traditional mock-jury studies with validated measures, to provide generalisable data, exploring the benefits of LGBT-representative mock-juries.  The final study will involve qualitative, semi-structured interviews with six, LGBT people with actual jury experience; how they and their opinions were treated by other jurors; how the jury foreperson was selected, their characteristics and influence and whether the jury instructions were clear and easy to understand. Interview data will be checked to see how this agrees and/or disagrees with the quantitative data.  

A final aim of this research will be to uniquely and specifically explore another concern raised by the Law Commission (2020), namely that jurors may not accept certain (transphobic) slurs as evidence of (transgender) hostility; as they may deem these common-language; or excusable when said by a defendant that has been provoked or in anger. To reduce such risks, jurors could benefit from clearer guidance, especially when these will be new laws. Again we expect  juror confusion and the lack of clarification of hate crime laws to be another factor that contributes towards lower conviction rates but expect this to be partially off-set in the LGBT-representative mock-juries.  

Together these factors are expected to highlight the need for law and policy changes to address;  

1) the current under-representation of LGBT people serving in UK juries 

2) the current genderist selection of the jury foreperson;  

3) the disproportionate sentence maxima of aggravated common assault; and  

4) the lack of clarity regarding jury instructions concerning aggravated hate crime laws to ensure fair trials and improve the low conviction rates. 

References 

Anwar, S., Bayer, P. and Hjalmarsson, R., 2012. The impact of jury race in criminal trials. The Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127(2), pp.1017-1055. 

Bandini, E. and Maggi, M., 2014. Transphobia. In Emotional, physical and sexual abuse (pp. 49-59). Springer, Cham. 

Foley, L.A. and Pigott, M.A., 1997. The influence of forepersons and non-forepersons on mock jury decisions. American Journal of Forensic Psychology. 

Hatzenbuehler ML (2016) Structural stigma: research evidence and implications for  

psychological science. Am Psychol 71(8):742–751. 

Hoffarth, M.R. and Hodson, G., 2018. When intergroup contact is uncommon and bias  is strong: The case of anti-transgender bias. Psychology & Sexuality, 9(3),  pp.237-250.   

Hyde, Z., Doherty, M., Tilley, M., McCaul, K., Rooney, R. and Jancey, J., 2013. The  first Australian national trans mental health study: Summary of results.  

Law Commission Report, (2020), Consultation paper 250, Final Report, September 2020, https://s3-eu-west-2.amazonaws.com/lawcom-prod-storage-11jsxou24uy7q/uploads/2020/10/Hate-crime-final-report.pdf.   

Lundrigan, S., Dhami, M.K. and Mueller-Johnson, K., 2018. A re-examination of the acquittal biasing effect of offence seriousness. Psychiatry, Psychology and Law, 25(5), pp.769-778.  

Nadal, K. L., & Mendoza, R. J. (2014). Internalised oppression and the lesbian, gay,  bisexual, and transgender community. In E. J. R. David (Ed.), Internalized oppression: The psychology of marginalised groups (pp. 23). Springer. 

Noble, C.M., 2019. Legal Transgressions: Anti-Transgender Bias in Mock Jurors (Doctoral dissertation, Northern Arizona University). 

Norton, A.T. and Herek, G.M., 2013. Heterosexuals’ attitudes toward transgender people: Findings from a national probability sample of US adults. Sex roles, 68(11-12), pp.738-753.  

Perry, B. (2001). In the name of hate: Understanding hate crimes. New York, NY: Routledge.  

Perry, B. (2009). ‘There’s just places ya’ don’t wanna go’: The segregating impact of hate crime against Native Americans. Contemporary Justice Review, 12(4), 401–402.  

Pettigrew, T.F. and Tropp, L.R., 2013. Does intergroup contact reduce prejudice?  Recent meta-analytic findings. In Reducing prejudice and discrimination (pp.103-124). Psychology Press. 

Rigger, C.S., 2021. Attitudinal predictors of juror decisions on gender and sexual minority defendants. Journal of homosexuality, 68(12), pp.2047-2074. 

van Anders, S. M. (2015). Beyond sexual orientation: Integrating gender/ sex and diverse sexualities via sexual configurations theory. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 44, 1177–1213. 

Yeung, P. 2016.“Transphobic Hate Crimes in’Sickening’170% Rise as Low Prosecution Rates Create ’Lack of Trust ’in Police. ”United Kingdom: Independent. Retrieved September 1, 2019 (https://www.independent.co.uk/ news/uk/home-news/transphobic-hate-crime-statistics-violence-transgender-uk-police-a7159026.html).

About the author:

Amrik Singh graduated in 1990 with a BSc Hons in Medical Biophysics at the UEL and completed his MSc in Biochemistry at KCL. He worked at Moorefields Eye Hospital and UCL hospital researching the aetiology of eye cancers and primary biliary cirrhosis. After working as a Probation Service Officer (and court officer), he worked in Prague and Canada as a TEFL Teacher. He completed his MSc in Psychology at Greenwich and started his PhD in Hate Crime at Bournemouth University in September 2021. 

A Passion for Change, by Dr David Wilkin

I felt honoured to be invited to deliver the inaugural lecture to the online community representing the Hate Crime Network on 23rd June 2021. In the presentation, I extolled the friendliness and passion which I have found to be so prevalent within hate crime researchers – that was a passion which, I argued, should be exploited. Hate crime is a set of offences which, I feel, are particularly unjust. To be targeted because of who you are and how you feel is an egregious act upon the person. For a person with a disability, you might already be encumbered by the obstacles which society place in your way daily. On top of these, someone might just see it as their responsibility to make your day even worse by abusing you, violating your intentions or perhaps physically assaulting you.

Hate crime generally, and disability hate crime specifically, have not been extensively researched or represented in the university system. Arguably, what is discussed within academia eventually finds its way through to general society. Therefore, if academics do not deliberate it, it seems logical that the public will not know about it – or if they do, they do not get a balanced view of it.

In my presentation, I argued that we, as academics, not only have a duty to research the uncomfortable, the inconvenient and those awkward topics, but we have a duty to allow ourselves to be emotionally attached to a subject that we find ourselves being passionate about. It is difficult to remain aloof from something that changes so many lives and that we feel so outraged about. One of the drivers for what we do and how we approach it is passion. I found myself investigating disability hate because it happened to me. No matter how hard one might try to approach research objectively therefore, in my case, I would always be emotionally attached to rectifying the injustices of these offences. So, whilst in our written work we might need to mitigate against emotional affect and realise how we are led by it – we cannot escape from it, and why should we.

Furthermore, in my presentation, I argued that academics should not preserve topics for their sole use. In other words, instead of the insularity of finding data; publishing it; discussing it; teaching it and criticizing it, academics should look over the university walls and consider how much of our specialized, hard won knowledge, could be of use to society in general. If we hold a passion to make the world a better place, to attempt to stop people being victimized for who they are, shouldn’t we be taking our expertise to the people? Why keep it to ourselves? To raise awareness in society of societal wrongs we must surely pop into society now and then and share what we know. Public talks, offering consultancy to public service providers and the police and appearing in the media and try to spread the word about the injustice that we have uncovered and continue so to do. It may be the equivalent of solicitors practicing pro bono work in the public good – to improve the public good. I can criticize my own good intentions by saying that time and resources are tight among the academic community – and this is true. But surely any deviation from being focused purely on academia can not only make you the go to person for that topic, but can also increase your skills set and, ultimately therefore, your employability.

If you have the time, why not do even the smallest thing to relate your expertise to the public, share your understanding of the unjust nature of social wrongs, and increase your notoriety at the same time. Working so hard to be recognized as an expert in your field is hard work. Perhaps now it is time to show off!