title: The emergence and development of Disability Hate Crime policy and practice
      in England and Wales
title: a case of an unsettled and unsettling policy agenda
titleType: Subtitle
Creators: name: Taylor, Seamus
Publisher: name: Lancaster University
Year: 2019
Subjects: hate crime policy making; critiquing disability vulnerability
Disability Hate Crime
Disability Hostility ; Disability Prejudice; Ableism : Disablism

description: This study aimed to analyse the emergence and development of Disability
      Hate Crime as a policy area in the criminal justice system in England and
      Wales. It did this through building an understanding of the contributory
      factors including the challenges within the criminal justice system, wider
      government and politics, the independent statutory sector and disabled
      peoples organisations that led to the emergence and development of
      Disability Hate Crime policy and practice. This study contributes the
      first comprehensive analysis of the emergence and development of
      Disability Hate Crime in England and Wales to hate crime studies.
      
      Using a case study approach the thesis triangulates evidence from
      interviews in activist, policy and political streams, from hate crime
      cases and analysis of policy documents to chart this policy journey. It
      analyses the journey from agenda invisibility through agenda triggering to
      significant institutionalised actions on Disability Hate Crime in the
      criminal justice system, showing the roles of activism, politics and
      policy making in shaping this policy process. It underscores the analysis
      of this policy journey with a key focus on problematisation in policy
      making on Disability Hate Crime.
      
      This study found that Disability Hate Crime has faced challenges in its
      emergence and development as a policy area in the criminal justice system.
      It has faced challenges at each stage of the policy journey from initial
      agenda triggering, through agenda setting and onto agenda
      institutionalisation.
      
      This study concludes that Disability Hate Crime is an unsettled and
      unsettling policy agenda with agenda institutionalisation, as an
      established predictable area of policy and practice, some way off, despite
      legislation in 2003.
      
      The study found that:
      
      - Disability Hate Crime remains an unsettled policy agenda in that it
      displays an unsettled discourse, varied ways of responding, a need for
      ongoing national strategic action, and limited transition into day-to-day
      routine business.
      
      - Disability Hate Crime is an unsettling policy agenda in that it
      challenges understandings of hostility and prejudice beyond direct
      manifestations of hostility. It is also unsettling in that it raises a
      dual problematisation of targeted crimes against disabled people as either
      hostility targeting or vulnerability targeting. This reflects a wider dual
      problematisation of disability as either an issue of welfare or as an
      issue of rights.
      
      - Current understandings of disability hostility reflect under recognition
      of disability discrimination and linked ideologies of ableism and
      disablism. This under recognition of disability hostility lead to justice
      failures in Disability Hate Crime cases.
      
      Constructions of the targeting of disabled people in crime as based on
      vulnerability lacks recognition of such targeting as biased, hostile
      targeting of disabled people.
      
      This study reconceptualises disability hostility as hostility including
      vulnerability targeting. Arising from these conclusions, on an optimistic
      note, this study recommends a change to hate crime law which recognises
      that disability hostility can be based on hostility demonstration, a
      hostility motivation or hostile targeting because of disability.
      
      This study concludes that rather than institutionalisation of Disability
      Hate Crime as day-to-day hate crime business, it still remains unusual
      business.
      
      This study contributes a reconceptualization of the concept of disability
      hostility to include targeting because of disability – ‘disability
      vulnerability’. It makes the case for varied legal provisions to reflect
      the protection requirements of different hate crime strands. It adds to
      the body of case studies on public policy making. Finally, it illuminates
      the influence of equality law on Disability Hate Crime policy making.