How 'hate' hurts globally

We sat down for dinner with three armed guards defending the restaurant door. That’s when we first started mentally drafting this chapter. We weren’t in the heat of a war zone. It was a cold March evening in Brussels. Our dinner companions were two dozen or so colleagues attending the Facing Facts Forward conference on a victim-centred approach to hate crime in Europe (CEJI 2015). Earlier in the day we were discussing how to improve the reporting of hate crime. Now, with the guards at the door, we were mindful that we were a potential target of hate violence ourselves. We pondered on what our chances of survival would be if what the restaurant owner feared actually came to pass. A former police officer, he insisted on arranging the guard when he heard that the dinner booking was made by a Jewish organisation. On seeing that one of us wore a kippa, a Jewish head covering, he respectfully but forcefully insisted it not be worn in the city, so that we minimise our chances of becoming the victims of hate violence. Thankfully, we enjoyed our dinner in peace and left the restaurant and the Belgian capital without incident. Others have not been so fortunate—as a recent spate of fatal attacks against Jews in Europe testifies. Occasional high profile incidents of extreme hate violence such as these in Europe have occurred against a backcloth of rather more frequent routine violence in which prejudice, hate or bigotry plays some part. Elsewhere in the world, acts of hate violence resulting in many fatalities have had extreme consequences and profound impacts upon the communities of people afflicted. In this chapter we unfold the spatial and psycho-social consequences of hate violence—every day and extreme, local and global—which, we argue, when viewed from a global perspective provide evidence of a major global public health problem that requires a paradigm shift away from a narrow criminal justice focus on the problem of ‘hate crime’. We argue that there needs to be a shift of thinking and focus towards a public health approach to the problem of ‘hate violence’

A question of faith?:prosecuting religiously aggravated offences in England and Wales

Have some of the prosecutions for religiously aggravated offences going before the courts amounted to attempts to apply unjust prohibitions against freedom of speech? Is there any evidence that the provisions for religiously aggravated offences have been applied to suppress criticism of religion? This paper applies an analysis of Crown Prosecution Service records on religiously aggravated offences to address these questions

Linguistic impoliteness and religiously aggravated hate crime in England and Wales

Despite its centrality to religiously aggravated hate crime recorded in England and Wales, the nature of the language used has been neglected in research. This paper, based on a unique dataset, aims to rectify this. It takes its approach from the field of linguistic impoliteness, a field that has yet to consider hate crime. Therein lies our second aim: to consider whether impoliteness notions can be usefully extended to the language of hate crime. In our data, we examine, in particular, conventionalized impoliteness formulae, insults, threats, incitement and taboo words. Whilst we reveal some linguistic support for the way religiously aggravated hate crime is framed in the law and discussed in the legal literature, we highlight areas of neglect and potential ambiguity. Regarding impoliteness, we demonstrate its effectiveness as an approach to this data, but we also highlight areas of neglect in that literature too, notably, non-conditional threats and incitement

Cyber offending predictors and pathways in middle adolescence:Evidence from the UK Millennium Cohort Study

Despite the pervasiveness of cyber crime victimisation, knowledge is limited regarding the prevalence, characteristics and pathways of offenders. The present study examines predictors of self-reported engagement in cyber crime in middle adolescence in a large (N=13,277) longitudinal dataset from the UK Millennium Cohort Study. We adopted an ecological systems approach to examine a range of multicausal, intersecting factors across individual, familial, psychosocial and environmental systems. The overall prevalence of self-reported cyber offending (account hacking or the deployment of viruses) was 5.6% at age 14 and 3.8% at age 17, although persistence over time by the same individuals was relatively low (1.1%). Significant predictors of cyber offending at age 17 were being male, domestic violence between parents, low parental monitoring, low wellbeing, self-harm, exclusion from school, spending more time online gaming, participating in offline leisure activities, and engaging in serious violence (weapon carrying or use), assault, and cyber crime at age 14. Findings indicate that young cyber offenders are often males and those who have experienced a range of risk factors that are connected to poorer wellbeing and engaging in multiple risky/offending behaviours. Implications for theory, policy and practice are discussed

Influence of acute pancreatitis on the in vitro responsiveness of rat mesenteric and pulmonary arteries

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Acute pancreatitis is an inflammatory disease characterized by local tissue injury and systemic inflammatory response leading to massive nitric oxide (NO) production and haemodynamic disturbances. Therefore, the aim of this work was to evaluate the vascular reactivity of pulmonary and mesenteric artery rings from rats submitted to experimental pancreatitis.</p> <p>Male Wistar rats were divided into three groups: saline (SAL); tauracholate (TAU) and phospholipase A₂(PLA₂). Pancreatitis was induced by administration of TAU or PLA₂from <it>Naja mocambique mocambique </it>into the common bile duct of rats, and after 4 h of duct injection the animals were sacrificed. Concentration-response curves to acetylcholine (ACh), sodium nitroprusside (SNP) and phenylephrine (PHE) in isolated mesenteric and pulmonary arteries were obtained. Potency (pEC₅₀) and maximal responses (E_MAX) were determined. Blood samples were collected for biochemical analysis.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In mesenteric rings, the potency for ACh was significantly decreased from animals treated with TAU (about 4.2-fold) or PLA₂(about 6.9-fold) compared to saline group without changes in the maximal responses. Neither pEC₅₀nor E_MAXvalues for Ach were altered in pulmonary rings in any group. Similarly, the pEC₅₀and the E_MAXvalues for SNP were not changed in both preparations in any group. The potency for PHE was significantly decreased in rat mesenteric and pulmonary rings from TAU group compared to SAL group (about 2.2- and 2.69-fold, for mesenteric and pulmonary rings, respectively). No changes were seen in the E_MAXfor PHE. The nitrite/nitrate (NO_x^-) levels were markedly increased in animals submitted to acute pancreatitis as compared to SAL group, approximately 76 and 68% in TAU and PLA₂protocol, respectively.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Acute pancreatitis provoked deleterious effects in endothelium-dependent relaxing response for ACh in mesenteric rings that were strongly associated with high plasma NO_x^-levels as consequence of intense inflammatory responses. Furthermore, the subsensitivity of contractile response to PHE in both mesenteric and pulmonary rings might be due to the complications of this pathological condition in the early stage of pancreatitis.</p

Perinatal Choline Influences Brain Structure and Function

Choline is derived not only from the diet, but also from de novo synthesis. It is important for methyl-group metabolism, the formation of membranes, kidney function, and neurotransmission. When deprived of dietary choline, most adult men and postmenopausal women develop signs of organ dysfunction (fatty liver or muscle damage) and have a decreased capacity to convert homocysteine to methionine. Choline is critical during fetal development, when it influences stem cell proliferation and apoptosis, thereby altering brain structure and function (memory is permanently enhanced in rodents exposed to choline during the latter part of gestation)