The analysis presented in Chapter Two using police records of anti-Jewish incidents in London draws from qualitative accounts of incidents that go well beyond the information conveyed by newspaper reports of ‘hate crime’. It would have been preferable, however, in terms of gaining a deeper understanding of the events that have been analysed, to gather information directly from victims, perpetrators and witnesses. Given the conditions of confidentiality attached to the police records, it was not possible to follow up the written records with further investigation. This limitation was a source of great frustration in the research as the analysis of the records of particular cases generated a variety of questions that could only be pursued by empirical investigation. In short, the police records provide ‘the next best thing’ to either observing events as they unfolded (for which the impediments are self-evident), or interviewing victims, witnesses and perpetrators. The practicalities, and the potential ethical problems, of identifying and gaining the participation of such potential interview respondents in sufficient numbers are considerable, although not insurmountable. However, given the difficulties with empirical investigation the secondary analysis of police records offers great scope for understanding ‘hate crime’, but the limitations of relying on individual moments, or incidents, to understand the process of crime must be acknowledged. Ben Bowling has argued that ‘Racial victimization is, like other social processes, dynamic and in a state of continuous movement and change, rather than static and fixed. While individual events can be abstracted from this process, fixed in time and place and recorded by individuals and institutions, the process itself is ongoing’ (Bowling, 1998, p 158).

In many cases, the police records of the anti-Jewish incidents discussed in Chapter Two provided accounts of longer moments than just the instant of the act of recorded transgression, as the movements, actions and behaviour of offenders and victims immediately preceding, during and immediately after the events were also captured. The police records were therefore not devoid of process and the recorded dynamics around the incidents informed the analysis and interpretation of events prompting judgements that they were opportunistic, aggravated, or premeditated, and so on. A more substantial omission from the police records concerned the broader social processes that underpin the incidents that were analysed.