Restorative justice and social conflicts: a focus on the issue of hate incidents

A blatant sign of this severe intensification of social conflicts is the public manifestation of hatred against specific categories of people, crossing the line between free speech and discriminatory or racist speech, when it does not degenerate to mere violence. Within the term “hate incidents” there could be episodes of hate speech, either online or face-to-face, slurs or insults, attacks to property, or even acts of violence against persons (Ainsworth and Bryan, 2016). In cases where those behaviors also happen to constitute the basic conduct for an existing crime, then we face a “hate crime” or “hate-motivated crime”. The chapter analyzes prevention and repression of hate incidents and hate crimes starting from traditional repressive responses and expanding into the realm of possibilities open by a restorative justice approach, including its potential benefits and risks.