In the United Kingdom, an official definition of hate crime is ‘any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic’, but this critical criminological concept is increasingly recognized, theorized, and researched beyond British and North American jurisidictions. The archetypal hate crime is a racist offence, but the category can also include religiously motivated, homophobic, disablist, and transphobic crimes, and may extend to other types of victimization such as ‘gendered hostility’, ‘elder abuse’, and even attacks on alternative subcultures and violence against prostitutes and the homeless. Hate crime is widely recognized as a particularly wicked form of behaviour, not least because of the especially deleterious impact it can have upon its victims, their families, and wider communities.

Now, to enable users to make sense of a complex and contested corpus of international scholarship, Routledge announces Hate Crime, a new title in its Critical Concepts in Criminology series. This four-volume ‘mini library’ enables users to consult influential texts, both old and new, and to trace the development of this important area of research and study.

With a full index, together with a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context, Hate Crime is an indispensable work of reference. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital research resource.