Timing is Everything: The COVID-19 Outbreak as a Trigger Event for Sinophobic Hate Crimes in the United Kingdom
Sandy Schumann · 2021
Timing is Everything: The COVID-19 Outbreak as a Trigger Event for Sinophobic Hate Crimes in the United Kingdom 2 Research Summary:We assessed whether the COVID-19 outbreak in the UK served as a trigger event, associated with a rise in sinophobic hate crimes.Police-recorded hate crime data from London (Study 1) showed that race hate crimes increased four months after the first COVID-19 case was reported in the UK.However, as the data was aggregated across different ethnic and racial groups, it is possible that the trend did not reflect sinophobic hate crimes.Study 2, a victimization survey completed by East Asian, South Asian, African, and Caribbean persons who lived in the UK (N = 393), provided more nuanced insights.After the COVID-19 outbreak, individuals of Chinese or East Asian descent had a higher likelihood of being hate crime/incident victims than members of other ethnic minority groups.Specifically, we found evidence for the targeted victimization in February 2020.Before the pandemic, the likelihood of hate crime victimization did not differ between Chinese/East Asian persons and other participants. Policy Implications:The results point to important implications for policy and practice.Echoing previous studies, we recommend that hate crime prevention strategies consider when hate crimes are most likely to occur.The period shortly after the discrete event appears to pose a particular risk for targeted victimization, even for trigger events that last several months and for which the perceived ingroup threat is initially hard to define.Furthermore, we highlighted similarities and differences in hate crime victimization for the Chinese/East Asian community and members of other ethnic minority groups.Only the survey study and not the police-recorded crime data allowed for this conclusion.To enhance abilities to address the victimization of all ethnic communities in equal measure and successfully, official hate crime statistics in the UK must record victim's ethnicity at a more granular level.