Exploring alternatives to the hate crimes model. Perceptions of civil society organizations regarding the application of restorative justice for bias-motivated crimes

ABSTRACT

Most European countries have adopted the hate crimes paradigm in their criminal systems for combating bias-motivated violence. This model contributes to increasing public awareness about the unacceptability of violence committed against vulnerable groups, and the need to provide them with formal protection. However, the hate crime model has been challenged, under the auspices that the widespread failure of criminal punishment to act as a deterrent to crime calls into question the extent to which hate crimes legislation actually reduces violence towards a particular group. An alternative or complement to the punitive and individualistic approach of hate crimes that could ensure adequate reparation for criminal behavior is the implementation of restorative justice programs. In this article we present and discuss the results of the survey (n = 288) carried out in six European countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland and Spain) with the aim of gathering the knowledge, perceptions and practices regarding restorative justice of representatives of the main LGBT associations and other civil society organizations that fight against discrimination. The results obtained show that restorative justice is still an incipient jurisdictional paradigm that requires further consolidation if it is to constitute an alternative to the punitive model of hate crimes.

KEYWORDS:

• Hate crimes
• LGBT
• restorative justice
• civil society organizations
• quantitative research

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank the participants in this research for their time and interest. We would also like to thank the European Commission for the financial support through the Justice Programme. We are also grateful to all the consortium of the project LetsGoByTalking that effectively promoted the survey at the national level in each involved country. Finally, our thanks also go out to the University of Barcelona for the coordination of the project, particularly to professor Olga Jubany for the international coordination of the project.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the European Union’s Justice Programme (2014-2020) [JUST-JACC-AG-2019-875763].