The Politics of Policing Hate: Boundary Work,Social Inequalities,and Legitimacy

Abstract

This article investigates how police officers and prosecutors make sense of and speak about their work with hate crimes. Our analysis rests upon Robert Reiner's widely acknowledged claim that policing is inherently political. We identified three core issues that illustrate the political nature of policing hate crimes. First, the politically contingent boundary work of distinguishing criminal from legal acts. Second, the impact of the enforcement of hate crime laws on the reproduction of social inequalities. Third, the “diversity politics” of gaining legitimacy and trust among minorities, which hate crime legislation is meant to protect. While a strong commitment to policing hate crimes is evident among our interviewees, we ask if the politically invested discourse they present may contribute to an absence of critical reflections regarding the limited effect of law enforcement, as well as a lack of engagement with pressing concerns regarding racialized crime control and racism.

Introduction

Robert Reiner's classic contribution to policing, in which he argues that policing is intricately intertwined with politics (Bowling et al., 2019), constitutes a core dimension in the theorization of policing and its consequences for liberal democracy. Policing can be understood as the preservation of a particular social order through the potential use of coercive force (Bowling et al., 2019). The police “are the ‘face’ of civil government and the primary contact point between citizens and the government” (Manning, 2010: 40). As power inequality is a dominant feature of liberal democracy, the impact of legislation and law enforcement is inescapably political (Bowling et al., 2019). Policing not only serves as a fundamental means of securing citizenship; it also constitutes state violence, which denies citizenship to the marginalized and least powerful (Waddington, 1999; Barker, 2017; Bosworth, 2022).

This article aims to explore how police officers and prosecutors understand and speak about the policing of hate crime. Hate crime becomes particularly interesting in light of Reiner's conceptualization of policing as a politically contingent construct that “has inspired legal and social change designed to protect people from being persecuted simply because of who they are, or who they are perceived to be” (Chakraborti, 2015: 13). In its simplest terms, hate crime can be defined as “criminal acts motivated by bias or prejudice towards particular groups of people” (OSCE, 2022). Hate crime legislation is designed to eradicate bias crimes, particularly against minority populations, through law enforcement and enhanced sentencing (Jacobs and Potter, 1998; Moran and Skeggs, 2004; Al-Hakim, 2010). It represents a field of shared interest between civil society, scholars, policy makers, and law and can be said to merge criminal policy, human rights, and identity politics (Jenness and Grattet, 2001). Based on interviews with Norwegian police officers and prosecutors, we identify three core themes, in which the politics of policing are particularly evident. These are (1) the negotiation of boundaries between crime and legality, and between hate crime and other forms of criminality; (2) the impact of law enforcement on social inequality; and (3) the importance of symbolic law enforcement to achieve legitimacy.

The article is structured as follows: we begin by presenting methods and materials, before providing a brief outline of the Norwegian Police Service and the Norwegian hate crime legislation in order to contextualize the study. We then present some core theoretical issues concerning the politics of policing as boundary work, policing and social inequalities, and the engagement of the police in legitimacy work. Next, we present and analyze our interview material in light of the theoretical framework. Finally, we offer a concluding discussion, in which we critically reflect on our findings in light of contemporary debates concerning policing and diversity.

Methodology

This study is based on interviews with selected police officers and police prosecutors involved in investigating and prosecuting hate crimes. Specifically, the data are based on qualitative interviews conducted between November 2019 and February 2022 with 15 law enforcement representatives who had first-hand experience of hate crime policing. The selection of informants in law enforcement positions was based on purposive sampling. The first author contacted the hate crime unit in Oslo and the National Cybercrime Centre, which is part of the National Criminal Investigation Service. Additionally, the first author contacted individuals located in different parts of Norway who had worked on hate crime cases. Of the 15 selected for interviews, 12 were police officers, 2 were prosecutors, and 1 was a civilian working in the police. In the context of this empirical study, policing hate is fairly new, and many police districts have only a handful of cases reported annually. The study context (2019‒2022) represents a period of increased attention to hate crime in policy and legal circles, and a transition period for the Norwegian police, who were in the process of expanding from a small hate crime unit to a National Expertise Center (Nasjonalt kompetansemiljø). The timing coincided partly with the COVID-19 pandemic, which led to conducting some of the interviews online or by telephone. An advantage was that it enabled the author not to be restricted by travel (Norway is geographically dispersed), but it also led to shorter interviews and less informality compared to those that the first author met personally. In other words, this meant less thickness in some qualitative interview data. Yet, some online interviews were conducted while the informants were at home, which for some enabled stronger self-reflection on past experiences.

Using discourse analysis (Dunn and Neumann, 2016), we found three recurring representations of how the police reflected on (1) dilemmas in policing hate crime, (2) understanding who the offenders were, and (3) following up with victims of hate crime, which were the main interview topics. These were discursive practices in how they defined, investigated, and interpreted offender patterns of hate crime, and the importance of their work. These practices give meaning to their daily work and were recognizable in interaction with their colleagues. The practices were repeated statements and words that organize their interaction with policing hate crime. In the analysis, we have a semantic focus on how they talk about offenders or victims in their line of work as police officers and prosecutors. The discourse analysis used the double reading technique (Dunn and Neumann, 2016: 109), which meant that the authors first conducted a descriptive reading of the interview data, where key topics were organized in a hierarchical manner. By “hierarchical” we mean establishing dominant representations of policing hate crime together with alternative, less frequent representations. Second, representations were discussed in dialogue with peers to deconstruct meanings and establish discourses relative to existing theories. This led to the overarching frame of the politics of the police. The core issues we identified as belonging to this debate provided a lens to give meaning to the dilemmas of policing hate crime.

The Norwegian Police Service and Hate Crime Legislation

The Norwegian Police Service (NPS) is organized on a national level, and is governed by the Police Directorate, which in turn is politically governed by the Ministry of Justice and Security. NPS is divided into 12 police districts, each led by a Police Chief appointed by the government. In addition to the police districts, NPS consists of 6 special units, among them the Norwegian Criminal Investigation Unit and the Norwegian Police University College (NPUC). To become a police officer, one must hold a bachelor's degree in policing, a degree solely provided by the NPUC (Bjørkelo et al., 2021). The NPS resembles police organizations of other European countries, although it relies heavily on the British principle of “policing by consent” rather than the French and continental more militarized “policing by force” (Ellefsen and Larsson, 2014; Finstad, 2018). The NPS also differs in some important areas. It is a unitary service based on the principle of the “police generalist.” Police students study the same education program, regardless of whether their future job in the NPS is within disciplines such as criminal investigation, crime prevention, or order maintenance. The generalist principle is meant to provide police officers with greater versatility and a holistic understanding of policing (Birkeland, 2007). Even more exceptional, in Norway, the first level of the Prosecuting Authority is integrated in the police. Police prosecutors, who are lawyers, decide whether investigation and prosecution should be initiated, limited, or terminated (Kjelby, 2022). This means that the police are governed in a “two-track system”; The Director of Public Prosecutions, who is politically independent due to the principle of division of powers, is responsible for the handling of criminal cases, while the Ministry of Justice is responsible for administrative, economic, and policing matters (Glomseth, 2015: 57).

The hate crime legislation included in the Norwegian Penal Code has changed, expanded, and reorganized over the course of the past 60 years. The promotion of racial hatred was criminalized for the first time in 1961, following a series of extremist and anti-Semitic incidents. Following Norway's ratification of the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination (ICERD) in 1965, a section prohibiting discrimination was added. A principle of enhanced sentencing in relation to other types of crimes motivated by hatred or prejudice was included in 2008 (Høy-Petersen and Fangen, 2018; NOU, 2022). The hate crime legislation in the Norwegian Penal Code has gradually been extended to include additional protected characteristics. Current hate crime legislation includes skin color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, gender expression, and disability (Hustad and Larsen, 2021). Although the number of reported hate crimes has steadily increased over the last couple of decades, they constitute only a small fraction of all reported crimes in Norway. In 2022, 923 hate crimes were reported to the police, while the total number of reported crimes was 305,000. Most reported hate crimes are dropped by the police, which implies that the police decide not to prosecute. Furthermore, only a small number of hate crime offenders received convictions (n = 54 in 2021) (The Police Directorate, 2022). In addition, half of all hate crime cases reported are in Oslo and one other neighboring district (Øst) (n = 395 of 815 cases out of 13 divisions), which for different reasons have a higher alertness to hate crime (Solhjell, 2023: 5). Hate crimes related to the victim's skin color, ethnicity, and religion constitute the majority of reported cases, while hate crimes related to the victim's sexual orientation, gender identity, and gender expression made up about 25% (The Police Directorate, 2023). Population surveys suggest only a small portion of actual hate crimes is reported to the police (Løvgren et al., 2022; Kantar, 2019). The investigation of hate crimes has for several years been defined as a high priority area in the annual circular published by the Director of Public Prosecutions. In 2021, the National Expertise Center was established in Oslo Police District. The mandate is to enhance the general expertise of hate crimes in the NPS, and assist the country's police districts in the investigation of hate crimes (The Police Directorate, 2023).

Policing Hate Crime: The Politics of Policing and Core Issues

The emergence of hate crime laws marks a fundamental change in the policing landscape. Groups that previously have been denied citizenship and suffered discrimination and lack of state protection now claim recognition and protection, citing state violence (Moran and Skeggs, 2004; Loftus, 2009). Social movements based on identity politics play a pivotal role in establishing hate crime legislation (Jenness and Grattet, 2001; Perry, 2002; Klatran, 2019). Unlike other forms of criminal law that the police is tasked with enforcing, hate crime laws differ in that they not only condemn the deed itself, but they also implicitly seek to delegitimize and combat the existence of prejudice, thus seeking to remoralize the social landscape (Mason, 2014b; Mason, 2014a). The three core issues presented in this article are based on the argument that policing in general—and policing hate crime in particular—are inherently political activities (Bowling et al., 2019). The first issue, boundary work, describes the operationalization of hate crime legislation, and in particular, what it covers and what it excludes. In the realm of hate crime, discourses on identity politics and social justice merge with the logic of punitiveness and a revitalized belief in the role of law enforcement in achieving social order (Mason, 2014a). The second issue addresses the impact of the enforcement of hate crime laws on social inequality. The impact of the law and its enforcement is undoubtedly political in the sense that it favors some at the expense of others (Bowling et al., 2019). Finally, legitimacy work in policing hate crime relates to the efforts made by the police, at least at the level of rhetoric, to offer state protection and social justice to groups traditionally associated with overpolicing and underprotection. This increased awareness of achieving legitimacy among minority groups relates to the current terrain of policing, as Loftus (2009) argues, characterized by a politics of policing diversity, which challenges the cultural ethos of police identity.

Boundary Work in Policing Hate Crime

The term “boundaries” is used extensively and for multiple purposes in social science studies (Lamont and Molnár, 2002). Here, we use “boundary work” to denote practices of creating, maintaining, disrupting, and negotiating what is socially constructed as crime (Purnell, 2014). As Kyed and Albrecht (2015: 15–16) argue, the police are “continuously preoccupied with enacting and negotiating boundaries”; while the laws and codes may be fixed, the who and what are criminal tend to shift in everyday policing practices and classification. Policing the politically contingent categories of “hate” requires carrying out sensitive and often complicated boundary work, between legal (but often offensive, hurtful, and frightening) acts on the one hand and illegal, punishable acts on the other. As such, they act in a fine balance of legal and moral censure as Sumner (1983) states. As he reminds us, “what is censured depends on the historical period and culture, the context, the level of outrage, the depth of interest and the perspective of the viewer” (Sumner, 2017: 4). In other words, what is criminal and what is legal and offensive are boundaries that are less clear to the rule enforcer (Moxon, 2017: 307). Enacting these distinctions becomes a matter of police discretion and the interpretations of prosecutors building hate crime cases.

The first form of boundary work in the policing of hate crime concerns the assessment of reported hate speech cases. Deciding whether a reported incident constitutes a crime according to the Penal Code, is not limited to hate speech or other forms of hate crime. However, the rather complicated and controversial status of hate speech acts was the primary concern among the informants in this study, which is largely related to how hate speech offences challenge the principle of freedom of speech (Jacobs and Potter, 1998). The limitation hate speech legislation imposes of freedom of speech becomes evident in Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights, in which expressions where hatred is intended or likely to be stirred up as a result are exempt from freedom of speech (Hall, 2013: 189). In the United States, the First Amendment of the Constitution prohibits criminalization, while punishment of expressions linked to criminal conduct is understood as constitutionally acceptable (Jacobs and Potter, 1998: 129). Nevertheless, the United States has ratified and implemented the ICERD, and the Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination (CERD) continues to express deep concern about the lack of criminal legislation that prohibits hate speech (CERD, 2022). The prohibition of hate speech was first included in the Norwegian Penal Code in 1970, to enable Norway to fully ratify ICERD (Høy-Petersen and Fangen, 2018). As with the rest of the Norwegian hate crime legislation, the hate speech paragraph, currently Section 185, has expanded and strengthened over the years. There is an established consensus that the threshold for being sentenced should be high, which typically implies expressions that encourage or condone violations of integrity, or imply a gross derogation of the human dignity of a group of people (NOU, 2022; Andersson, 2022). Nevertheless, several hate speech cases have appealed to the Supreme Court, suggesting that these boundaries are politically and legally contested (Wessel-Aas et al., 2016).

The second form of boundary work in the policing of hate crime implies distinguishing between hate crimes and other criminal acts. This distinction is made through sentencing. Hate crime legislation rests on the principle of enhanced sentencing, meaning that crimes motivated by hatred or prejudice toward particular features of a person or group should receive harsher punishment than similar crimes without such a motive (Jacobs and Potter, 1998; Chakraborti and Garland, 2015). Proponents of enhanced sentencing claim crimes motivated by the victims' identity traits cause greater psychological damage, spread fear among other members of the targeted group, and can escalate into intergroup conflict (Høy-Petersen and Fangen, 2018). Advocating an opposing perspective, Jacobs and Potter (1998) claim there is little difference between the impact of bias and nonbias crimes, and that many forms of nonbias crime, such as violence, can spread fear in communities and cause retaliation and escalation between groups. However, hate crime legislation serve symbolic or moralizing functions. Enhanced sentencing for hate crimes is a way for the state to communicate to its citizens that hatred and prejudice, not just the crimes they cause, are undesirable (Mason, 2014b).

Social Inequalities and Offender Perspectives

The topic of social inequalities concerns the impact of law and its enforcement as political, favoring some at the expense of others (Waddington, 1999; Bowling et al., 2019). Here, we question the impact of the ability of hate crime laws to address offenders motivated by hatred and prejudice, the eradication of which is the purpose of hate crime legislation. This concern impacts prosecuting offenders from disadvantaged backgrounds or even marginalized, “prolific” offenders.

Studies on offender patterns in hate crime are rare but remind us that hate crimes are not simply carried out by “deviant others” with extreme ideas and prejudice, and that stereotypical views are quite common. McDevitt et al. (2002) presented a typology of perpetrators of hate crime and showed that hate crime offenders vary in terms of their motives for committing such crimes. Interestingly, the least common motivation among the perpetrators in their study was what they refer to as a “mission” (i.e. offenders who are fully committed to hatred or bigotry). These findings align with those of Jacobs and Potter (1998), who claim that the majority of hate crimes fall into a category of “low prejudice and low causation.” The infrequency of ideologically committed “haters” points toward more structural accounts of the nature of hate crimes. Perry (2001) offers a perspective where hate crimes are acts of “doing difference” as a result of hierarchical structures of power, where prejudice toward subordinate groups is a crucial part of maintaining the pecking order. Not unrelated to such an account is Levin and Rabrenovic (2009), who suggested that prejudice is an integral part of an individual's socialization process, where shared myths and stereotypes are internalized alongside norms, values, beliefs, and roles. These approaches correspond well to the concept of the “gender order,” where the subordination of gay men and men of color is a compulsory part of the performance of “hegemonic masculinity” (Connell and Messerschmidt, 2005). This, of course, has implications for the optimism applied to law enforcement as a strategy. As Høy-Petersen and Fangen (2018: 254) critically reflect, “If hate crimes are caused by a general social climate, rather than the attitudinal deviance of individual outliers, it would be more effective to engage in general work against racism and prejudices than to target individual perpetrators, in order to combat hate crimes.”

Walters (2011) points out that people experiencing socioeconomic strain will often be less able to control feelings of hostility toward other people they deem to be “different.” This resonates with other studies on hate crime offenders, which identify a link between social and economic marginality and engagement in crimes targeting minorities (Sibbitt, 1997; Gadd et al., 2005; Hardy, 2014). Furthermore, perpetrators of hate crimes often have a history of other forms of criminal behavior (Sibbitt, 1997; Ray et al., 2004; Roxell, 2011). In this sense, the realm of hate crime does not differ from other forms of criminality. Differences in socioeconomic factors become more pronounced in frequent offenders and offenders who commit serious crimes (Skarðhamar, 2003; Piquero et al., 2007; Sutherland et al., 2013). According to Christie's assessment, the typical registered offender can be described as follows: “They are men, they do poorly at school, they live in cities, they are socially marginalized” (Christie, 1982: 93 our translation). As indicated earlier, hate crime legislation is founded on the principle of enhanced sentencing because of the sentiment that hate crimes constitute a particularly serious threat to the morals and ideals of modern, diverse and multicultural societies. On the other hand, it becomes increasingly questionable whether hate crime legislation successfully targets the vectors of hate ideologies where most hate crimes seem to be committed by relatively ordinary people in relatively mundane situations (Iganski, 2008; Chakraborti and Garland, 2012).

Legitimacy in Policing Hate Crime

Finally, a central dimension of the politics of the police concerns the (il)legitimacy of law enforcement. As Bottoms and Tankebe (2012) have pointed out, legitimacy is dialogical, requiring an understanding of claims made both power holders (e.g. the police) and the public (e.g. victims and interest groups). It begs the question of whether the police are justified in claiming the right to hold power of policing hate in relation to certain citizen groups. We suggest that legitimacy work in policing hate crime is particularly interesting, as the “progressive” politics of identity merge with the neoliberal politics of crime control in the realm of hate crime politics (Jenness and Broad, 1997; Moran and Skeggs, 2004; Klatran, 2023). In the construction of hate crime, Lewis (2013: 91) notes: “Members of historically marginalized groups and their allies are given access to public support by condoning post-difference ideology.” The current paradigm of “law and order” reflects what Bowling et al. (2019) refer to as “police fetishism”; that is, an unwarranted assumption that without a police force, a state of chaos would arise. Discussions of policing, they claim, are dominated by the “law-and-order” myth, which falsely portrays the police as an effective force for crime control.

The police seem to appreciate that the limits of law enforcement have led to greater recognition of what is often described as “symbolic policing” (Walker, 1996; Holmberg, 1999a; Loader, 1997b; Manning, 1997a). On the one hand, the management of appearance is understood as a feature of policing, the purpose of which is to benefit the police and its resources (Manning, 1997b; Bailey, 1994). Management of appearances has moved the center stage as new models of policing have replaced the traditional “standard model” of policing (Tilley, 2008). Holmberg (1999b) argues that management of appearances is a crucial and integral part of policing, and indispensable for securing police legitimacy. On the other hand, the role of symbolic policing is seen as extending far beyond the realm of the police. As Loader (1997a) argues, people's relationship with the police is affective, in that the police represent the willingness of the state to protect its citizens and provide social order. This points to an appreciation of the symbolic dimension of the relationship between the state and its citizens.

The limited effect of law enforcement has implications for legitimacy in policing hate crimes. Policing hate crime implies policing groups and communities that often share a collective history of police discrimination and lack of state protection (Loftus, 2009; Bowling et al., 2019). Overpolicing and underprotection of ethnic minorities have led to underreporting, or even no reporting, of hate crimes (Bowling, 1999; Giannasi, 2015; Chakraborti and Garland, 2015). Population surveys from the United Kingdom suggest the vast majority of LGBTIQ people do not report hate crimes to the police (Moran, 2015; Chakraborti and Garland, 2015). Similar surveys conducted in Norway mirrored these findings. In 2019, only about 2 out of every 10 hate crime victims reported the incident to the police (Kantar, 2019). In a recent survey on LGBTIQ people's trust in Norwegian police, only 8% of hate crime victims said they had reported the incident to the police (The Norwegian Police, 2022). In addition to underreporting, investigation of hate crime cases is often unsuccessful, with many reported cases not leading to prosecution and sentencing (Tiby, 2007; Chakraborti and Garland, 2015; The Police Directorate, 2022). Thus, the limited effect of law enforcement suggests that policing efforts beyond crime control constitute an indispensable part of legitimacy work, particularly within the realm of hate crime (Klatran, 2019).

Policing Hate Crime: Boundary Work

Our empirical findings illustrate two dimensions in boundary work: firstly, the recurring debate over what constitutes punishable and nonpunishable acts; and, secondly, distinguishing between criminal acts with a “hate motive” and acts without such a motive (i.e. “regular crime”). There is extensive discussion regarding the first—in political circles, too—focusing on the issue of hate speech versus freedom of speech (Wessel-Aas et al., 2016; NOU, 2022). Second, our informants reflected on their knowledge and awareness of hate crime and their concerns about how colleagues fail to notice these crimes despite long careers investigating criminal cases more generally.

When debating hate speech versus freedom of speech, our informants would use words like “borderland” (grenseland), “limits” (grenser or rammer), “on the edge” (randsonen), “threshold” (terskelen), and “within” (innafor). These words reflected the policing process, from establishing an act as a criminal case, how they explored motives in such acts, and how they handled the expectations of those offended by the acts. They also used the words “new” and “challenging” when describing the policing task of establishing and investigating cases with a potential hate or bias motive. One police officer investigating hate crimes described the task as follows:

There are a number of gray areas and many assessments: what is punishable, what is not; what is a political statement, what is unpleasant to say but not punishable. We are still sitting here and scratching our heads, even though this has been the focus since 2014. So we have a long way to go.

The task of enforcing the law on hate speech was considered by many informants as a fine line between living in a democratic society and curbing speech considered harmful. This issue is intimately connected with the ideas of democratic policing, where the police usually avoid restricting political and ideological views (Manning, 2010). The challenge of distinguishing crime from legality, and hate crime from other criminal acts was highlighted by a police prosecutor in an assessment of the criminal elements of a verbal or physical act:

A punch is a punch. That is not difficult to determine. But a statement is much more difficult to assess.

In other words, identifying the exact point where freedom of speech ends and hate speech begins is a particularly difficult form of boundary work. Here, the police must carefully assess the interpretation of specific acts, symbols, and language rather than relying on an a priori determination. This aspect is central to how hate is identified and interpreted in law enforcement, where the actions of the individual police officers and legal experts interviewed in this study play a part in defining what is a threat to society and what is an acceptable behavior in social democracy. In everyday policing practice, these aspects test the boundaries between upholding freedom of speech and controlling the use of hate speech, or the principle of equal rights but also of citizens with characteristics that allow them special legal protection.

The boundaries separating freedom of speech—a core aspect of democracy—and hate speech proved an engaging topic for prosecutors in criminal cases. In legal terms, the Norwegian “hate speech paragraph” states that any person who makes a discriminatory or hateful statement because of another person's religious or life stance, skin color, national or ethnic origin, sexual orientation, gender identity and expression, or disability is liable for punishment with a fine or imprisonment. The section thus implies a clear limitation of the constitutional right of “freedom of speech.” In practice, such grounds represent a relatively new area of responsibility for prosecutors, as alluded to in the citation below, resulting in many daily instances of creating limitations and boundaries:

It can be a threshold; that it is a difficult topic. Sometimes, one may be reluctant to enter a topic. (…) I think it is because you need to consider hate crime in relation to freedom of speech. These are two important… You need to focus on both. The threshold for limiting the freedom of expression should be high, so it is important to target the most important cases.

As for the second area of debate, namely distinguishing between criminal acts with a “hate motive” and acts without such a motive, our informants expressed their concerns about having the knowledge required to identify hate crime cases in the first place. These issues could be practical concerns, such as the boundaries of bias motive in hate crime cases and the differences between “objective” and “subjective” facts. As one of the police officers said, the police may arrive at a scene and assume it is a “regular fight” they are reporting and that “the investigators will do the rest; and they forget to go into the case in depth.” In other words, there is boundary work between those who know and those do not know what hate crime is and how to identify such cases. Our informants were officers and prosecutors who are familiar with hate crime, but they reflected on and expressed concern about colleagues (with a long track record in policing and investigating criminal cases generally) who fail to identify hate crimes when they happen. One police officer reflected on his colleagues in the following way:

So there you have an investigation over five to six pages where she described how she was brutally attacked, but only in the last sentence on the last page, it says, ‘While he was beating and kicking me he shouted “goddam negro” all the time.’ So there you have people who are experts in interrogating cases of violence who do not ask follow-up questions (…) like ‘How often did he say that?’, ‘Did he say anything else about your skin color?’ (…) The term ‘hate crime’ is not part of the culture in my police district; nor is even thinking along those lines.

This account highlights a serious challenge in the enforcement of hate crime legislation and safeguarding of due processes. What is prioritized, by whom, and where, are political questions in the sense that policies and priorities change. The government's decision to establish a National Expertise Center intends to remedy the different standards of policing hate crime in the various police districts. It includes knowledge about hate crime in the Norwegian police and assists police districts in their investigation of hate crime cases. In other words, the center may reduce the division between insiders—experts on policing hate crime—and outsiders (namely, generalists in the police) with regard to investigating hate crime.

Social Inequalities: Chasing Usual Suspects?

The next issue in the politics of policing hate crime concerns social inequalities, the social process of marginalization, and how certain actors represent “usual suspects” and become labeled criminals. By “usual suspects,” we refer to clients that the police easily recognize (Hestehave, 2021: 293). This term also highlights that they are aware of the problems they reproduce in upholding social inequalities. Our informants debated offender issues, including who gets caught and prosecuted, who falls outside the radar of the police, and who avoid prosecution for questionable acts. Those who tend to get caught, in short, were seen as “usual suspects” in the way that they may already have a track record of encounters with the police due to issues of substance abuse, various socioeconomic problems, and/or mental illness, combined with acts of public disorder. Policing targets the most marginal and least powerful groups in society who become “police property” (Waddington, 1999; Bowling et al., 2019). Our informants were aware of the issues that reflect class and power inequalities in the impact of law enforcement.

Closely connected with the topic of legitimacy is how pursuing hate crime offences serves a greater purpose of societal justice for those who experience discrimination and unequal treatment. Thus, the “ideal victim” (Christie, 1986a) is alluded to as pursuing ideal offenders of hate crime. The “ideal victim” is a defenseless person carrying out a respectable errand who cannot in any way be blamed for becoming a victim, while the “ideal offender” is big and bad, morally flawed, and blameworthy. As Christie points out, “The two are interdependent. The more ideal a victim is, the more ideal becomes the offender. The more ideal the offender, the more ideal is the victim” (Christie, 1986b: 25). Specifically, the police target offenders of a different kind, who may cause greater societal fear and/or influence others to commit violence. These “ideal offenders” are assumed to be dangerous in their capacity to radicalize others, and they use symbols and tools that are bordering on, but not crossing the line into, criminality.

First, in describing the “usual suspects” of hate crime, our informants would use the following expressions: they act in a way to “belittle” others (å sparke nedover), they are “not functioning well in society” (lavt fungerende i samfunnet), they “have few resources” (ressursvake) and/or are “sad/awkward” (stusselig). They might also describe offenders struggling with drug addiction and psychiatric problems. Iganski (2008: 39) noted that the difference between the offender and wider community is that “they act on their attitudes whereas others do not.” This is in line with Walters (2011), who found that offenders may have low self-control. This view was also apparent in the comments of some Norwegian police (with an added element of class distinction), regarding the issues of orderly and disorderly citizens. When asked about who the offender might be, one of the police officers said:

Those who commit these acts are usually not directors or engineers; they are people with low impulse control and not from the bourgeoisie (beste-borgere). I am sure that the bourgeoisie also think along the same lines, but they have better impulse control. If you start digging into people's prejudices, you will find a lot to work on.

In other words, those who get caught, receive police attention and are penalized if the case is upheld are those who act on “common” prejudices in Norwegian society. This could become frustrating for some investigators seeking more important criminals whose intention is to cause fear and potentially radicalize individuals into violence toward minorities. Indeed, in a green paper submitted to the Norwegian government by the Freedom of Expression Commission, the commission remarks on what they refer to as a “social flip side” of hate speech legislation. Well-spoken and highly influential hate ideologists have communicative skills to avoid criminal charges by, for example, using dog whistles. Prominent members of hate organizations may thus walk free, while a pensioner posting a comment on Facebook gets a sentence (NOU, 2022: 206). The importance of catching more “deserving” offenders was particularly highlighted in this police officer's comment:

These people know the penal codes well and know how to test them to the limits while avoiding falling into the category of hate crime. That makes them more dangerous than those ‘everyday’ acts where the offender is a substance abuser or struggling with mental health issues. (…) They are more dangerous not only in the sense of influence and power but also in terms of having a larger harmful effect. They are future-oriented, with a bigger vision (…).

This perspective reflects an assumption about an “ideal offender,” where societal harm is the greatest risk compared with the “usual suspects,” who have a number of social, economic and mental health issues. Not all informants necessarily shared the view cited above but the issue was indirectly raised when the police officers described who the typical offenders were and those who were challenging to prosecute. This insight into how and why hate crimes occur and who hate crime offenders are, becomes particularly interesting in light of Christie's typological binary of the ideal victim and the ideal offender (Christie, 1986b). The offenders would as such not be performing the role as “ideal offenders” (Christie, 1986b) by being big and bad, morally flawed and blameworthy. Instead, the police expressed how they “felt sorry for the person” being investigated, how that person should have received followup with mental health professionals rather than ending up on the “punitive track.” Instead, they better fit the category of “typical offenders” (Christie, 1982) of being socially and economically marginalized men. However, there are certainly nuances to this perspective. As one police officer said, it is also important to prosecute the usual suspects for cases of hate crime:

It is sad because it is everyday racism, and it is scary—we don’t want to detract from it; it is mean towards those who experience it. Of course, we want to catch those who spread poisonous, negative attitudes and who radicalize other young people, but they are not necessarily those who get caught.

Finally, some police officers also pointed out how some victims of hate crimes, especially young men with ethnic minority background, could in other situations themselves be perpetrators of hate crimes. As one officer stated:

There are many cases where young men from the Middle East and North Africa beat up gay men. It is not necessarily because they hate gays, but they diverge from masculine ideals that they seek when entering manhood. Those who end up attacking gay men typically have committed other crimes. We find it worrying that they seek victims, where gay men are legitimate victims, because they are sinful and represent difference.

The statement made by this officer reflects how hate crime politics are entangled with the construction of nationhood. Puar (2007) uses the term “homonationalism” to describe the inclusion of some (but not all) queer subjects in the narrative of “US exceptionalism,” which is contingent upon the segregation and disqualification of racial and sexual “others” from the national imaginary (Puar, 2007). Cultures deemed patriarchal, oppressive, and religiously fundamentalist, often referred to as the “Islamic world,” serve as a constitutive outside, lending substance to the purportedly liberal and progressive nation states of Europe and North America (Klatran, 2023; Mepschen et al., 2010; El-Tayeb, 2011). Racialization of anti-LGBT hate crime does not merely operate within the boundaries of the “progressive/backwards” dichotomy of homonationalism. It also resonates with current configurations of crime control being increasingly concerned with migration, referred to as “crimmigration.” New laws and practices of policing reflect how migrants are primarily seen as potential criminal offenders, rather than people in need of protection or as a potential source of labor (Franko, 2020). Thus, these young men neither seem to constitute “ideal victims” nor “ideal offenders”, as they are presented as a dubious character in the landscape of hate crime politics.

Legitimacy: Police-Citizen Relations in Handling Hate Crime

In this section, we demonstrate how police place great emphasis on legitimacy and how they have adopted the language of procedural justice. The officers interviewed in the study emphasized how they followed up with victims to send a message to the public that the police are taking hate crime seriously. They would use expressions such as the importance of “feeling accepted” (møtt med forståelse fra politiet) and “feeling looked after” (de føler seg mer ivaretatt) when they described encounters between police officers and victims of hate crime. They might emphasize how they were dependent on trust (avhengig av tillit) when initiating a hate crime investigation, especially when reflecting on how certain minority groups may have less trust in police. Here, officers might describe the issue of handling clients as “challenging” and talk about a “lack of trust” and how certain minority groups had a “higher threshold” when it came to going to the police (Saarikkomäki et al., 2020; Solhjell et al., 2019; Hammer et al., 2020).

Although these perspectives were shared by the informants, the hate crime unit was particularly attentive to what we interpret as procedural justice issues in policing hate crime. For instance, one police officer in the unit described the following:

From the perspective of the aggrieved party, the most important aspect is that they have had positive experiences during criminal proceedings. If their case is taken to court and the suspect is convicted, it is not so important whether a bias motive is proven. I think either way they feel satisfied that the process was OK.

As noted, policing hate crime involves groups and communities with ambivalent relationships with the police, and legitimacy work remains challenging. As Hall (2013) argues, enforcing hate crime legislation is not a panacea for the problem of hate crime, and in terms of “success” in policing hate crime, the quality of the police response to victims may be of greater value than clear-up rates. Increased awareness of “procedural justice” could be understood as such a shift in the way the police conceptualize—and to some degree practice—the policing of hate crime. The term “procedural justice” focuses on policing as a relational process, as opposed to merely a means to achieve a certain outcome. When police treat people with respect and give them the opportunity to participate in the process before decisions are made, police legitimacy is more likely to be achieved (Jackson et al., 2012; Tyler, 2006; Mazerolle et al., 2014). Others in the hate crime unit also described how, when a case is dismissed, police officers in the unit telephone the victim, explain the situation, and listen to their concerns. One police officer described this practice as a way to ensure that the aggrieved party feels they are “taken care of and that the matter is taken seriously.” Considerable effort is made by members of the hate crime unit to communicate to the public that what people have been subjected to is punishable and that they want more people to report such incidents to the police. As one officer explained, this is an inexpensive effort that takes only 5 to 10 minutes, but which can be of great importance to the aggrieved party. It “is a form of trust that I hope and believe is spreading” to other people with protected characteristics. Furthermore, members of the hate crime unit actively check the police incident log to identify cases of hate crime. As part of that endeavor, when the investigators suspect an incident is related to hate crime, they also contact the aggrieved party and ask if they would like to report the case. One police officer described this in the following way:

We call the aggrieved party and say, ‘We understand you were subjected to this. Do you wish to report it?’ And they may say, ‘I didn’t even know it was punishable.’ So you feel that (…) in this unit, you work to help minorities who hardly know their rights. So that is really rewarding.

The police and legal experts were keen to talk about the importance of “feeling respected,” “being looked after,” and “being safe” in relation to how the aggrieved party is handled in these cases. In Oslo, aggrieved parties in some cases might be invited to participate in a “safety program” developed in the Oslo Police District. This program was initially developed for young people who had experienced crime, but it was subsequently offered to minorities affected by hate crime (Giske, 2014). The program offers a point of contact (police officer), a conversation and option of revisiting neighborhoods/situations where victim encountered crime together with the officer.

Police officers also reflected on their colleagues, particularly regarding how generalists in the police treated the same minorities in other cases and how they lacked knowledge on hate crime. They feared that victims might not be taken seriously and described how this affected the legitimacy of the police in the eyes of minority groups. One police officer explained the topic in a longer excerpt:

One of the reasons why so few cases are reported to the police is that aggrieved parties lack trust in the police. Internally in the police, we should always treat everyone the same. But we should make an additional effort when it comes to reporting hate crime. Because someone told me that when they contacted the police, the response they got did not reflect their subjective experience of the case. (…) It is the human being who should be in focus, those who own the experience; they should be in charge, and they deserve our attention. Whatever the legal grounds, such incidents are violations of their integrity and humiliating, and they will never forget that incident. It is important that police do not forget their mission in society. We are there for citizens, not the opposite. It requires the police to work extra hard to prove compassion and integrity.

Legitimacy is not limited to those directly affected by hate crime. Police officers in the hate crime unit enjoyed a high degree of legitimacy with civil society organizations that lobby for enforcement of hate crime legislation. Regular meetings between police and civil society representatives (an initiative from the Equality and Anti-Discrimination Ombudsperson) enabled dialogues on what the police officers saw as missing cases, and sent out a message of trust in the police through these representatives.

The National Expertise Center also enjoyed legitimacy through mainstream media that contacted them and referred to their work when annual crime statistics were reported. In this media–police relationship around figures, discussions about underreporting of hate crime are common. There is also an assumed positive association between a high number of reported crimes and police legitimacy in handling hate crime. As mentioned, crime statistics show high reporting numbers in some police districts and almost none in others. The skewed numbers of reported hate crimes are a reason for political concern. As already mentioned, the small hate crime unit transitioned to the national expertise center during the study. This process changes the focus of hate crime from an issue for the capital, Oslo (with individual officers in various other police districts tasked with paying attention to hate crime as required), to an agenda for all police districts at a national level. The transition may affect legitimacy in relation to groups that reportedly have less trust in the police in police districts where hate crime has not been a focus.

However, while statistics on reported cases may indicate that the police have become more successful in getting their message across, statistics on the outcome of registered hate crimes illustrate the limits of law enforcement, which perhaps explains why there is so little focus on outcome statistics when the police present their work on hate crime. The Police Directorate does not provide complete statistics on the outcome of registered hate crimes in Norway. However, outcome statistics from Oslo Police District show that most reported cases do not lead to prosecution and conviction (Oslo Police District, 2022). This illustrates a dilemma in legitimacy strategies: Pushing up numbers of reported hate crime cases is contingent upon a widespread assumption among hate crime victims that reporting incidents to the police makes a difference. On the other hand, failing to communicate clearly that reported hate crimes often are dropped may result in victims being disappointed and feeling underprotected. Also, a widespread unawareness of the limits of prosecuting hate crimes among police officers may obscure an appreciation of the important of procedural justice and more symbolic efforts of policing, such as The Safety Program.

Concluding Discussion

In this study, we explored issues concerning the policing of hate crime in Norway. As a point of departure, we engaged with the sociological insight that policing is inherently political (Bowling et al., 2019). First, police expressed concerns regarding the negotiation of boundaries between crime and legality. Second, they critically reflect on the negative impact hate crime policing may have on social inequality. Third, they emphasized the importance of legitimacy, particularly among minority groups, which hate crime legislation is meant to protect. Based on our findings, we suggest that the changing landscape of policing diversity has implied the alignment of the police to a politics of diversity, and more specifically to the demand for social justice for people who continue to face discrimination and hostility simply for being who they are (Loftus, 2009). Legitimacy work performed by the police inevitably involves “management of appearance” (Holmberg, 1999b). This does not merely shape the practice of law enforcement; it also shapes the discursive frames, within which police officers speak about policing of hate crimes and issues regarding diversity.

Making sense of how police speak about hate crime also requires attention to what is not spoken about. There is no doubt that the officers in the study are genuinely committed to the pursuit of justice for victims of hate crime, but the discourse presented by the officers in our study comes across as contradictory. The officers were critical and reflective in some areas, but oblivious to others. They emphasized the importance of hate crime policing as boundary making, while at the same time they seemed overly optimistic about the role of law enforcement and did not reflect upon poor clear-up rates. The discursive frame of legitimacy work—which inevitably includes management of appearances through specific stylizations of rhetoric—may contribute to an absence of self-critical reflection among police officers regarding the limited effect of law enforcement. It seems rather contradicting that officers who seem genuinely supportive of the ideas of procedural justice do not recognize the importance of transparency when it comes to the prospect of succeeding with the prosecution of hate crimes. As procedural justice rests upon the idea that procedure, rather than outcome, is what generates trust in the police, we suggest it would be beneficial to articulate this perspective to a greater degree. The failure of The Police Directorate to provide complete, national statistics on the outcome of reported hate crime cases is a hurdle to overcome in police legitimacy. Two UN committees, The Human Rights Committee and The Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, have recently expressed their concern for Norway's lack of statistics on the outcomes of registered hate crimes (CERD, 2019; CCPR, 2018).

Some informants recognized the dilemma of “rounding up the usual suspects” in the pursuit of social justice for people facing racism, homophobia, and other strains of hatred. On the other hand, issues concerning overpolicing of some minority groups, especially people of color, were absent in their articulations of legitimacy work, despite appreciating that minorities often have lower trust in police. Norwegian research on relations between minorities and the police continues to raise concerns regarding the racialization of crime control (Finstad, 2018; Leirvik and Ellefsen, 2020; Hammer et al., 2020; Solhjell, 2019). Thus, the discourse on legitimacy work seems to ignore the nexus between underprotection and overpolicing (Saarikkomäki et al., 2020).

The rhetoric primarily concerned with gaining trust and legitimacy may hinder any serious attempt to engage critically with sexism, homophobia and racism in the police force. As Lofthus (2009: 52) found in her study of the British police, while some (often younger) officers tend to embrace the new regime of diversity politics, others (often older and male) officers articulate resistance and resentment toward the institutionalization of diversity. Research on police culture in Norway similarly demonstrates how elements of misogynist, homophobic and racist attitudes and slur have been an integral part of police occupational culture, often in relation to articulations of what constitutes “real” police work (Finstad, 2000; Gundhus, 2005; Sollund, 2007). Police culture in Norway may have evolved since these publications, alongside cultural, demographic, and political changes in society. However, recent studies of ethnic minority police officers in Norway suggest racism and lack of diversity continues to plague the Norwegian police. Leirvik (2023) found that it is not uncommon for ethnic minority officers to experience microaggressions from their ethnic majority colleagues. Despite years with focus on diversity in various action plans and strategy documents, a recent survey shows that only 2.6% of Norwegian police officers have immigrant background (Bjørkelo et al., 2021), while 19.9% of the Norwegian population has immigrant background (Statistics Norway, 2023). A recent Norwegian, longitudinal study by Fekjær and Alecu (2022) shows that police students and police officers with non-Western immigrant background have a greater tendency to dropout of police education and leave the service.

Dealing with the rather ambiguous state of diversity in the Norwegian police service may indeed put the police in a catch-22 situation. A diversity discourse which acknowledges a persisting problem with racism and lack of minority representation may raise doubt about the police as a legitimate agent in the fight against hate (Atak, 2022). On the other hand, not openly addressing this problem and understanding its relevance to policing hate crime, certainly jeopardizes any legitimacy they currently might have in the field of diversity work. Along with an increased sensitivity of the limits of enforcement of hate crime laws, we believe the police in the long run may benefit from adopting a rhetoric which appreciates that different aspects of diversity work are related. An increased awareness of the importance of procedural justice in encounters with hate crime victims may prove to be fruitful, especially since many reported hate crimes are dropped by police. However, legitimacy work aimed at minority groups will most likely have a limited effect if the police express commitment to the eradication of hate crimes, while failing to engage in debates regarding institutional racism in the police and the overpolicing of some minority groups.