Hate Crime Prosecution at the Intersection of Hate Crime and Criminalized ‘Hate Speech’: a Practical Guide

Abstract

This guide supplements existing ODIHR guidance on prosecuting hate crime by outlining the legal and conceptual differences between hate crime and criminalized ‘hate speech’; outlining the consequences of misapplying ‘hate speech’ provisions to prosecute hate crime, providing practical guidance on how to avoid this; and making recommendations on how to improve practice at the national level. It does not provide guidance on how to handle individual cases of any form of criminalized ‘hate speech’, nor does it suggest what forms of behaviour should be criminalized. The guide includes the Prosecutor Decision Tree [https://www.osce.org/odihr/580594] tool, which shows how hate crime provisions should be applied and how they are distinguished from criminalized ‘hate speech’; it also maps other relevant offences at the intersection of hate crime and criminalized ‘hate speech’.