Hate Crime and the Image of the Stranger

Popular images of hate crime tend to portray it as a form of stranger danger'. This image has now been effectively challenged in a number of empirical studies. This article seeks to contribute to this body of research by examining the nature of the relationship between victim and perpetrator in both racist and homophobic harassment. It presents the results of a study into complaints of harassment recorded by the Metropolitan Police Service. It argues that traditional approaches to measuring this relationship, which tend to centre on the degree of intimacy between victim and perpetrator, might be helpfully developed by greater recognition of the contexts within which victim and perpetrator know each other. In particular, the article asks: if a perpetrator is recognized by a victim as someone who is familiar or local to his/her home or work, does this necessarily mean that the perpetrator is known to the victim?