And, none of the records CNN has obtained show Hope Hopper, the mother who said the crime was racially motivated, was ever even interviewed by authorities.

CNN: Victim's son: 'They ran him over because he was black'

For example, it thinks well of the Labour government's 1998 Crime and Disorder Act, which stiffens sentences for racially motivated crimes, and of the Human Rights Act, which comes into force in October and is designed to entrench individual freedoms.

ECONOMIST: Race relations