Policing Hatred: A Case Study of an English Police Force

This article makes an important contribution to the field of hate studies by advancing the understanding of hate crime policing in the United Kingdom. The article presents an ethnographic case study on hate crime policing within a small-city police station in England. The study focused primarily on the police station’s Community Cohesion Unit (CCU), which was responsible for supporting hate crime informants, and for monitoring and assisting police officers handling hate incidents and hate crimes. The case study is mostly descriptive and exploratory in nature. Its primary objective is to provide needed insight into the inner workings of a police unit in order to obtain systematic knowledge on how hate crime laws are enforced in real-world settings. The study does not aim to present a new theory of hate crime policing; but in gathering fresh data from a new source, the study suggests potential directions for future empirical work and theoretical inquiry.