In the last 25 years or so, the concept of ‘performance’ and its concomitant suffixes ‘culture’ and ‘indicators’ have come to dominate discourse surrounding public service policy and practice, as a consequence of a radical shift in the ethos of public sector provision that emerged following the election of the Conservatives under Margaret Thatcher in 1979.

‘It is a question of extracting from time, ever more available moments and, from each moment, ever more useful forces.’ (Foucault 1991 / 1975, P. 154)

Hate Crime can be defined as that section of criminal behaviour that is motivated by the victim’s membership or perceived membership of a particular group.

Performance targeting has developed differently in the three key criminal justice agencies, police, prison and probation.

This paper explores the paradox that whilst the quantitative measures of prison performance in relation to ‘race relations’ indicate substantial improvements in service delivery, more qualitative measures of the quality of prison life appear to indicate little substantive improvement in race relations.