Abstract

Community Safety Units in the London Metropolitan Police handle over 9000 reported incidents of ‘hate’ crime each month. This paper explores the work of these Units through its conceptualisation of the notion of vulnerability. The workload of the CSUs includes domestic, racist and homophobic incidents. The victim/perpetrator relationship, it is assumed, provides special motivation for the offender's violence and requires police to consider special support for the victim. The paper begins with an exploration of how the MPS conceptualises ‘hate crime’. Its rationale for dedicated resources for the policing of particular forms of violence can be found, I suggest in the second part of the paper, in the way in which violence itself is conceptualised. I then offer a different term for thinking about hate crime – targeted violence. I go on to argue in depth how the logic about violence obscures our ability to take people's ordinary experiences of intimidation, threat and bodily harm seriously in law and in society. The term ‘hate crime’, I conclude, in advertently reinforces this logic.