Hate Crimes in New Zealand: Why Do We Know So Little?

By Andrew O’Malley Shand

In 2018, a Chinese-New Zealander family was driving in Āwhitu peninsula. An oncoming car veered into their side of the road and swerved to miss them. Enraged, the driver pursued the family, confronted and threatened them with his dog, and, when they drove away, followed them. While the family initially escaped, the driver found, tailed, and hit their car such that it flipped. The family were severely injured, the children flung from the car and requiring medical attention. The driver verbally abused them even as they lay injured on the roadside. 

We would not have knowledge of such an event if it were not for the media and the Courts. What we lack is the systematic and widespread reporting of hate crimes and other instances in a national database. There are serious issues with failing to collect and report information on hate crimes in New Zealand.  

Hate motivated crimes, or hate crimes, have an enormous impact on individuals and communities. They strike fear into many more people than those directly affected and cast a much wider net of harm. They are also a very complex topic. It is important to state some bare-bones definitions, and some factors which are contended. 

Hate crimes are crimes motivated by hatred towards an individual or group because of their identity.  These may or may not be actual criminal offences, such as targeted speech. These may or may not include those outside of ethnic minority groups. 

Hate crime reporting is the process by which the data on these acts is collected, analysed, and published. This article will demonstrate why it is both important and useful to collect this data. 

I spoke with Dr. Chris Wilson, an academic and director of the Master of Conflict and Terrorism Studies at the University of Auckland. Dr. Wilson has worked on the front lines of ethnic and political conflict internationally and has expertise in the enigmatic world of hate-motivated crimes, including reporting. He kindly agreed to discuss hate crimes and reporting in New Zealand. 

The Dire Consequences

“Hate crimes are a different form of crime that has an impact far broader and far more severe than normal crime. Studies show that it doesn't just cause harm to the victim or group of victims, but causes waves of physical and psychological harm on that victim’s ethnic, religious, racial, community, sexual, or gender community. Because the person was targeted because of that identity, therefore, any member of that community feels that they could be at risk. These even have an impact on society itself in terms of breaking down norms of pluralism, democracy, and the ability of any group to function and participate in society. It's akin to terrorism: it is designed to send the message to the broader society, cow particular communities into submission, send a message to decision makers and Government and so on, to maintain racial hierarchies. So, it has fairly dire consequences that are quite far-reaching.”

The Ineffective Status Quo 

“The media will focus on crimes against certain groups at a particular moment. I imagine most minority communities in New Zealand have good reason to suggest that there's been under-reporting of crimes against them. Māori have long claimed regular racism and abuse against members of their communities that was not widely recognised. Asian New Zealanders have probably seen a spike in terms of that type of intimidation in the context of Covid-19. Before [the Christchurch terror attack], Muslims believed that it was occurring frequently, and nobody paid any attention. The Jewish community believes that there has been vandalism and other forms [of hate crime] that are not reported. Certainly, after a crisis there is a greater focus on reporting those types of crimes. It's one of those questions that is difficult to answer without the data. I believe from what I can see so far that it comes and goes.”

The Gap in our Knowledge

“There has been very little reporting on hate crimes in New Zealand up until this point, as one of the problems is that New Zealand doesn't have discrete, or separate, legislation for hate crime. All we have is sentence enhancement. That means that the judge is required to take into account if the perpetrator was motivated by hatred of the victim’s, racial, ethnic, religious, sexual or gender identity. 

“One consequence of this is that we don't have any register of the number of hate crimes in New Zealand, where they've been occurring, against which victims, who is perpetrating them, whether they're rising or falling, whether they correlated with particular events overseas or domestically in New Zealand - there's just a very large gap in our knowledge on hate crime in New Zealand.”

The Government Approach

“The Government, and particularly the Prime Minister, in the aftermath of Christchurch see social cohesion, prejudice, and racism as a serious issue. Hate crimes are seen as a breakdown in social cohesion and indicative of a rising problem. It’s also not just about hate speech, it's countering violent extremism, building social cohesion, social inclusion, diversity, and so on. 

The Government is taking a broad approach. Each agency is doing different things. The Ministry of Justice is releasing hate speech legislation. The Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet is working on countering violent extremism, ethnic fears, and social cohesion, amongst other things. The National Centre of Excellence on countering violent extremism has to be formed by the end of this year. The Police have started collecting hate crime information. At some point, it's all going to come together into a whole of government approach.”

An Unknown Timeline

“I think a lot of these changes are being made, but they're being made quite slowly. The Police are now starting to make a record of when crimes do appear to have been motivated by the victim's identity. I haven't seen the template or how they're recording that. I think it's happening at the local level rather than nationally. From what I understand it is in the formative stages of that kind of data collection. Hopefully, there will be a bit more consultation or a little bit more involvement of people who work in this area who can give them some advice on the best way to collect data and what to do with it. Everything is happening, but it’s not certain when we will see outcomes.”

A New Zealand-specific Approach 

“In the United States, the FBI collects a data set on hate crimes. In the United Kingdom, they have registers of hate crimes and discrete legislation, which is far more trackable and analysable. I think there are a number of exemplars that we could be considering. I'm sure that the Government and Police are speaking to their counterparts overseas. I think it needs to be tailored to the New Zealand context.

“I can’t say whether there has been enough focus on it to suggest that the Police have been given the training on how to deal with hate crimes. Whether they know how to identify it, report it, or understand the impact of it. It would mean that they're not thinking about those broader consequences or how it is indicative of broader trends within society. These are all reasons it would be good to interact with the Police to ensure hate crimes are treated more seriously.”

Taking the Causes as Seriously as the Solutions

“I believe we need more focus on what's causing violent extremism. White nationalists, in particular, as well as other forms of violent extremism in New Zealand - looking at why there is sympathy for how people radicalise. It’s a really important issue and it needs to be given the resources and attention that it deserves. It’s a big societal problem, overseas, and now it has come to New Zealand. The Christchurch attacks were a watershed moment and it's made the situation worse in New Zealand than it was before. I think the causes need to be taken just as seriously as the solutions. We need to understand what's driving it. That's the key thing that the Government and others need to focus on a lot more.”

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