Aggravating racism and elusive motivation

Since the implementation of the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, courts in England and Wales have seen an increase in the number of racially aggravated charges brought before them. However, the extent to which racism is central, rather than ancillary to, the offences prosecuted under this law remains contested, both in individual legal cases and in criminological writing about hate and bias-motivated crime. Using the narrative accounts of one man convicted of perpetrating a racially aggravated assault, this article outlines how important it is to engage with the complexity of motivation as it is perceived by offenders and the necessity of developing analytic approaches capable of transcending what offenders say about their attitudes to race.