Introduction to Multi-Volume Series of Hate Crimes

Hate crimes have garnered significant attention over the past twenty-plus years. These bias motivated crimes have been studied by social scientists as a means of responding to the needs of individual victims and communities. Currently a new generation of scholars is beginning to address the problem of hate crimes from an evidence-based approach.

During this same period several highly-publicized domestic terror events have been carried out by “home grown” perpetrators. These ideologically motivated offenders frequently share many of the beliefs and attitudes found with hate crime perpetrators. Yet too often the problems of hate crimes and domestic terror are considered independently from each other. The similarities between bias and ideologically-motivated crimes need to be considered. This can in turn provide guidance for strategies for prevention, critical incident response, and treatment of victims and perpetrators.

This multi-volume book series will examine the psychological characteristics of hate crimes and domestic terrorism. The series will importantly consider the international propagation of hate crime laws and anti-terror policies in non-western and emerging democracies. Of particular interest is how hate crime policies are implemented in diverse cultural and political contexts. We wish to seriously consider how cultural norms and traditions are related to problems of intergroup violence. This book series will address not only ethnic and religious violence but additionally gender-based violence and resistance to the rights of women, sexual minorities, and the disabled. The contribution of authors from diverse cultural contexts is therefore valued, as a means of expanding our understanding of hate crimes internationally.