The Journal of Criminal Law

This article will focus on LGBTQ people's perceptions of violence in the United Kingdom in the years following the advent of same-sex marriage using original empirical evidence. These perceptions will be discussed by focussing on the awareness of hate crime legislation, the role of law in constraining homophobia alongside intersections of racism, and of the impact of civil law reform protecting LGBTQ rights. This may be evidenced in many ways, which this article will recount, including demonstrating awareness of hate crimes, avoiding overt shows of affection, and the use of safe spaces to exhibit their sexuality. Empirical evidence will be used to suggest that despite the advent of hate crime protections, increased relationship recognition rights, and greater representation, many LGBTQ people anticipate violence or harm because of their sexuality. This article will use theoretical and empirical analysis to discuss the ways in which violence may manifest in the perceptions of LGBTQ participants and the significance of such perceptions in the ‘post-equality’ society.

This article examines the new offence of Non-fatal Strangulation s. 75A Serious Crime Act 2015, inserted by s. 70 Domestic Abuse Act 2021 and concludes that further re-drafting should be considered. The creation of a specific crime of non-fatal strangulation is an issue previously considered and legislated for by a number of legal jurisdictions and their experiences are a source that England and Wales should have drawn upon to avoid further legislative reform in this area. This has not happened and s. 75A, prompted by the call to better protect victims of domestic violence and abuse, has been drafted in a manner that will limit its ability to achieve this aim. This is evident by the limited language to describe and define the prohibited conduct and the complexity arising from the inclusion of a defence of consent in some circumstances. Given the potential educative function this offence has, these aspects of the new offence are a significant blow to campaigners seeking improvements to the criminal justice response to domestic violence and abuse. This article outlines the relevance of non-fatal strangulation (NFS) to the social problem of domestic violence and abuse and makes the argument that a new specific offence is justified. It then explores from selected legal jurisdictions examples of non-fatal strangulation (NFS) offences to draw out elements that have either assisted or hindered the prosecution of these cases. This comparative approach provides the basis for analysis of the s. 75A offence to determine what challenges it will present to the prosecutorial authorities.

Controversy over Drag Queen Storytime (DQS) childhood literacy events in many Western liberal democracies between 2018 and 2020 occurred within a broader rise in reported ‘hate crime’, notable in the United States and in England and Wales. Outrage from conservative US Christian anti-LGBTQ hate groups and activists, and far-right groups, included online bias-motivated harassment, in-person bias-motivated harassment, and alleged assault and property damage. This article analyses news media and public discourse on hateful conduct against DQS events in the United States and related conduct in the UK and Australia. This hateful conduct draws on legacies of the criminalisation and pathologisation of same-sex attraction, and the framing of non-conforming gender identities as ‘deceptive’. The findings emphasise the recursive nature of bias-motivated hateful conduct based on medico-legal and pseudo-scientific stigmatisation of same-sex attraction and gender fluidity, and the amplificatory capacity of social media networks to engender hateful conduct. The article analyses the broader implications of hateful conduct given the limits of the criminal law in the United States (and other Western liberal democracies such as the UK and Australia) in addressing the translation of online hate speech into bias-motivated in-person hateful conduct. In the United States, these limits are often defined through the unqualified invocation of freedom of speech protections. The article applies ‘digiqueer’ criminology as a frame to consider the harms of bigotry against LGBTQ people amplified through digital media technologies and their intersection, particularly in the US, with Christian righteousness and right-wing ideology through a ‘hate feedback loop’.

It has been well established at a global level that sex workers are often victims of direct violence in the course of their work, targeted by their ‘perceived vulnerability’ as a marginalised group. In one police force in England (Merseyside) since 2006 they have addressed this victimisation through adopting a ‘hate crime’ approach to policing crimes against sex workers. The aims of this paper are first, to review the implementation of the hate crime model applied to crimes against sex workers; second, to explore how police forces are adopting the policy across the UK, and the operational barriers to doing so; and third to explore the legal, theoretical and critical issues raised by treating crimes against sex workers as a type of hate crime through policing models. The conclusion weighs up some of the challenges to expanding the current law to include sex workers as a target group for increased protection, assessing that a fully funded policing approach may well be sufficient alongside law reform around decriminalisation of sex work. This article will draw on data from police forces in England. We acknowledge that much more work is needed to establish the sex work community's views on the value, if any, of the hate crime approach.