Customer Reviews

Policing Hatred: Law Enforcement, Civil Rights, and Hate Crime

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Policing Hatred examines the important issue of hate crimes from a new vanatage point -- the cops on the beat, whose actions and decisions will affect significantly the judicial process. Bell's study of how and why police charge crimes as hate crimes is facinating, very well-written, and accessible to anyone interested in law and political science.

Professor Bell carefully chronicles the work of a hate crime unit in a major metropolitan area. Her work offers careful detail of the type of crimes encountered, decisions investigate and charge suspects, and even the varied outlook of different cops within the unit.

At the same time, Bell keeps her narrative grounded in real cases and real injuries. The result is a detailed analysis that remains engaging and compelling, and does not sacrifice individual anecdotes for the sake of social science.

The book contains quite a bit of detail reflecting the author's ability for efficient and focused research. But the questions that she is pursuing, while potentially interesting to lay audiences and certainly socially important, aren't especially insightful, and accordingly, neither are the answers that she provides for them. The task that the author has set for herself is one that demands a strong propensity for the accumulation of detail (which is important) but the details themselves don't necessarily lead to the kinds of penetrating analysis that one might hope for in scholarly literature generally and especially this topic.