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.

The rhetoric about support for victims of crime is excellent, and the themes of many victim conferences over recent years have sounded both impressive and powerful.

The government’s recent provision of £9.5 million to establish demonstration projects to provide integrated community services for female offenders was a welcome development.

In this paper I am concerned to document the ways in which ordinary and mundane experiences of criminal victimisation, alongside the more widely publicised threats posed by terrorist activities, transgress our everyday sense of well-being and in the light of this to consider the range policy responses that have been put in place.