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Disability Hate Crime: Perspectives for Change book cover

1st Edition

Disability Hate Crime Perspectives for Change

Edited By Leah Burch, David Wilkin Copyright 2025
    262 Pages
    by Routledge

    Bringing together perspectives from academics, practitioners, campaigners, and activists, this book explores the victimology of disability hate crime (DHC).

     

    For the first time, this book brings together recent academic thought, the stance of those working for the United Nations to further the rights of disabled people, and a helpful toolkit of how to advance the status of the disabled victim of hate crime. Campaigners, support workers and legal scholars present a tangential approach to revealing the plight of disabled victims, and their associates. The book will reveal the expertise required to understand experiences of victimisation and how to help reconstruct the lives of those affected by this type of violence. Never before has a book produced such a nuanced and multidisciplinary approach to discussing disability hate crime.

     

    This volume will be useful, not only for those academically interested in how disability hate crime is perpetrated, but also for scholars who wish to study how to raise awareness and lobby for change. It is essential reading for those engaged with hate studies, victimology, disability, and vulnerable communities, as well as practitioners and campaigners.

    Contents

     

    List of Contributors

    Foreword

     

    Introduction

    David Wilkin and Leah Burch

     

    1.           The Vagaries of Vulnerability

                  David Wilkin

     

    2.         Revealing the Benefits, Barriers, and Prevalence of Intersectionality in Disability Hate Crime Research

                Jane C. Healy

     

    3.         Geographies of Disability Hate Crime

                Edward Hall

     

    4.         Disability, Mate Crime, and Cuckooing (Home Takeovers)

                Stephen J. Macdonald, John Clayton and Catherine Donovan

     

    5.         Online Harm? Uncovering Experiences of (in)Visible Appearance-Based Trolling and Hostility

                Lauren Doyle

     

    6.         Structural Disability Hate

                Emma Astra (AKA The Disabled PhD Student)

     

    7.         ‘Every Day Is Filled with Unexpected Violations’ - Examining the Continuum of Disability Hate Crime for Disabled Women

                Hannah Mason-Bish

     

    8.         Online Disablist Hate Speech: The Role of Social Networking Sites

                Erin Pritchard

     

    9.         The Emotional Labour of Researching Hate Crime

                Irene Zempi

     

    10.        Disability Hate Speech and Hate Crimes: Assessing the Role of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in Tackling Disability-based Animus

                Janet E. Lord, William I. Pons, Michael Ashley Stein, Kathy Ellem and Paul Harpur

     

    11.        Working in Partnership: Opportunities, Values, and Impact

                 Leah Burch and Joanne English (on behalf of People First Merseyside)

     

    12.       Hate Crime Advocacy

                Ashley Stephen

     

    13.       Campaigning against Disability Hate

                Bethany Bale

    14.       Policy Futurities of Disability Hate and Hostility: Reflections from Two Jurisdictions

                Claire Edwards

     

    15.       Disability Hate Crime: Historic Achievements and Future Directions

                Stephen Brookes MBE

     

    Conclusion

    Leah Burch and David Wilkin

     

    Index

    Biography

    Leah Burch is a senior lecturer in the School of Social Science at Liverpool Hope University. Leah is a member of the British Society of Criminology Hate Crime Network, where she co-lead on postgraduate and early career researcher events. Leah has also published in numerous learning journals on the topic of disability hate crime and affect theory.

     

    David Wilkin is a self-funded campaigner, activist, and supporter of victims of disability hate crime. David is an Honorary Fellow at the University of Leicester, an Associate Lecturer at the Open University and a member of the British Society of Criminology Hate Crime Network, where he co-lead on postgraduate and early career researcher events. In 2022, David also co-directed the world's first international conference on disability hate.

    'Rich in conceptual insight, methodological rigour and innovative ideas, this book challenges us to look beyond conventional assumptions about disability, vulnerability and hate crime. This is essential reading at an urgent moment.'

    - Neil Chakraborti, Professor in Criminology, University of Leicester 

    'This is a very important book that adds fresh perspectives on a key issue: disability hate crime. By including chapters covering such an impressively wide range of topics, Burch and Wilkin, themselves leading experts in the field, have compiled an excellent volume that provides the most comprehensive coverage to date of this important yet hitherto understudied form of hate crime. This book is a must-read for hate crime academics and practitioners alike.' 

    - Professor Jon Garland, University of Surrey

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