Transforming practice

Working with the University of Leicester’s Centre for Hate Studies has enabled us to apply contemporary academic research into operational practice. This has led to significant and positive cultural change in relation to staff training and the embedding of new systems approaches and processes to track and report hate incidents in NHS inpatient and outpatient healthcare settings. This in turn has ensured that we as a Trust are equipped to support the needs of both patients and staff who have been affected. I cannot speak highly enough of both the School of Criminology and the Centre for Hate Studies for the support they give to statutory organisations like the NHS and wider community and voluntary sector. Without them change would not have been possible.

The Centre for Hate Studies has been delivering the Standing Together project to tackle harassment, hate crime and sexual misconduct in higher education through the three rounds of the OfS safeguarding catalyst programme. In addition to raising awareness and providing support to the University of Leicester student body, the Centre has been a driving force in seeking to understand and support the needs of those who have experienced hate crime and harassment. Their work has created a wide range of research and resources to tackle and address hate and harassment.

As a scholar and a student of Hate Studies, the Centre for Hate Studies has been a source of information, critique and refuge for students and practitioners hoping to understand the complexities of hate crime and ultimately how we eradicate it in our communities. Prof. Chakraborti and all at the Centre for Hate Studies have worked diligently in our communities, with victims of hate crime, practitioners and scholars to ensure the symbiotic relationship works to stop the scourge of hate crime.

The work of the Centre for Hate Studies has been vitally important to the Stop Funding Hate campaign, and has played a key role in our success. By evidencing the clear link between hateful media coverage and hate crime on our streets, the Centre for Hate Studies has helped us to build a clear and compelling case to big brands that they must take more responsibility for the impact of the millions of pounds they spend each year on advertising, and take positive, proactive steps to avoid funding media that fuel hatred. Thanks in part to the Centre's strong and public support for our work, and for the work of our industry partners, the Conscious Advertising Network, it is rapidly becoming an established principle within the advertising industry that brands must take as much care over the impact of their advertising as they do over other parts of their supply chain. As more and more advertisers have taken these arguments on board, we have seen a marked reduction in hateful headlines within the UK press. Just this week [June 2020] over 200 advertising industry leaders publicly endorsed a call for brands to stop funding racist and white supremacist content through their advertising and join the Conscious Advertising Network. The support of the Centre For Hate Studies has lent vital credibility to our advocacy over the last three years and this is now yielding concrete real-world changes.

The Centre for Hate Studies has contributed significantly to the Law Commission’s review of hate crime laws in England and Wales. We have drawn upon the Centre’s research in our policy development, which has deepened our understanding of victims’ experiences and barriers to reporting, the profile of offenders, the relationship between victims and offenders, and the role of restorative justice. Our Consultation Paper includes an eight page section describing the research undertaken as part of the Centre’s “Leicester Hate Crime Project”, one of only two research projects featured in this way in the paper, both of which we describe later in the paper as having made “valuable contributions” to “research into the sources of hateful attitudes, [and] effective ways to reduce recidivism and prevent hate crime offending in the first place.” The paper also features discussion of Professor Chakraborti’s work on the role of vulnerability and difference in the selection of protected characteristics or groups. We have also had the benefit of Professor Chakraborti’s expertise in peer reviewing chapters of our Consultation Paper. There is no doubt that the evidence base for our review is more robust as a result of the Centre’s work, and this should ultimately lead to better policy outcomes for the community.