So-called 'hate-crimes' frequently make the headlines: the bombing in May 1999 of the Admiral Duncan, a 'gay pub' in Soho, London, in which three died and scores were injured; the callous attack in Wyoming on the young gay man Matthew Shepard who was pistol-whipped, and left lashed to a fence in freezing conditions to die later in hospital in October 1998; the brutal murder by white supremacists of James Byrd, who was beaten unconscious, chained to the back of a pickup truck and dragged for miles along rural roads outside the town of Jasper, Texas, in June 1998; the racist murder of black teenager Stephen Lawrence in South London in 1993; and the axing to death of black teenager Anthony Walker in Merseyside in July 2005, are some of the prominent hate crimes brought into the public eye by the media. But behind these well-publicised incidents are thousands upon thousands of hate crimes that don't make the news.

The volume of incidents clearly shows that hate crimes are a serious social problem. The Institute for Jewish Policy Research has published two books on the problem of hate crimes: The Hate Debate, a collection of essays on the controversy of hate crime laws, and Hate Crimes Against London's Jews that focuses on 'antisemitic' hate crime. Both are these books are published here in full online along with some other useful resources.