Crime And Hate Crimes

In 2009, 6,604 hate crime incidents were reported to the FBI, 48.8% of which were motivated by race, 19.7% by religious prejudice, 18.5%by sexual orientation, 11.8% by ethnicity, and 1.5% by disability bias (Hate Crime Statistics, 2009). Recently, the FBI released the 2010 statistics that unfortunately reveal a slight increase in the number of hate crime incidents: 6,628 incidents were reported in 2010, 47.3% of which were motivated by race, 20% by religious prejudice, 19.3% by sexual orientation, 12.8% by ethnicity, and .6% by disability bias (Hate Crime Statistics, 2010). While racially-motivated and disability-motivated crimes appear to have decreased, hate crime motivated by religion, sexual orientation, and ethnicity has risen in the last year. Improvements in hate crime laws and punishments are necessary in order for these statistics to decrease.

A 2005 study conducted by National Institute of Justice, found that the Federal Government and all but one state, Wyoming, have laws related to hate crimes. A consistent problem identified by this study is there in no consistency in defining what constitutes a hate crime. (Carrie F. Mulford, Ph.D., & Michael Shively, Ph.D., Hate Crime in America: The Debate Continues, 257, Nat’l Inst Just., (2007). “The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines hate crime—also called bias crime—as “a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national origin.” ld.

Humans have long inflicted harm on each other on the basis of characteristics of identity. However, as members of civilized societies began denouncing such practices, notable changes began to occur within the structures of society. Specifically, within the United States, hate crime first became a subject of concern in the political rights and policy domain of the 1960’s Civil Rights era. Since then, crime has been the recurring focus of a slew of new legislation. Most recently, the enactment of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Act of 2009, (the “Shepard -Byrd Act”) the focus of this paper, has transformed the landscape of this social problem.

The American Heritage Dictionary defines hate as intense dislike or animosity. However, defining hate as the basis for a crime is not as easy without possibly jeopardizing constitutional rights in the process. Hate crime laws generally add enhanced punishments to existing statues. A hate crime law seeks to treat a crime, if it can be demonstrated that the offense was a hate crime differently from the way it would be treated under ordinary criminal law. Since the 1980s, the problem of hate crimes has attracted increasing research attention, especially from criminologists and law enforcement personnel who have focused primarily on documenting the prevalence of the problem and

“Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that” (Martin Luther King Jr). Hate crimes are a big problem in the world today and need to be stopped. To end hate crimes people need to learn to look past what is on the outside of a person and learn to love what it on the inside. In the selection, Why We Need to Tolerate Hate by Wendy Kaminer, Kaminer emphasizes what hate crimes are and how they are treated differently than other crimes. Since hate crimes are a problem in the world today, we need to understand if hate crime prosecution is prosecution of thought and belief, the change of hate crime laws over time, and the way that the prosecution of hate crimes has changed over time.

As previously mentioned, hate crimes are borne out of one person’s prejudices. However, rarely does prejudice alone cause hate crimes. It is a toxic mixture of one’s prejudices, anger and animosities in life. (Sepulveda Carmona, 2012) First, hate crimes are caused by the mundane – thrill seeking. (Burkes, 2017) People crave the sudden rush of adrenalin

People may not commit hate crimes when they can’t achieve their goals. Lazarus R.S. (1966) examines that “stress arises when individuals perceive that they cannot adequately cope with the demands being made on them or with threats to their well-being”. Stain theory can wholly explain that people will commit hate crimes when they can’t meet the perspectives they want. People may commit hate crimes when their personal benefits. For example, civilians will feel certain violations to their benefits from the official people such as polices or the court justices.

The phrase “Hate Crime” rose to prominence in the 1980s, in an attempt to describe crimes against someone based on their race or religion. These crimes were motivated, at least in part and sometimes in entirety, by bias against African Americans and Jews. Since that time, the term has expanded to include illegal acts against a person, organization, and their property based on the criminal’s bias against the victim’s minority class. These minority classes include race and ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, disability, or gender reassignment. These are specific crimes because not only are they crimes against someone, they are committed based on who someone is (Martin 1996). This paper will discuss the history of hate crimes and the response of law enforcement officers to hate crimes.

As indicated, hate crimes can be explained through the use of theory and, one such theory is the symbolic interactionism theory. As criminologists were engaged in attempting to

Though as a form of discriminatory behavior, hate crimes often have an attitudinal dimension, the relationship between prejudice and criminal behavior tends to be complex. There is reason to believe that certain hate offenses result from some personal bias or hatred. In the extreme case, a hatemonger may join an organized group in order to devote his life to destroying a group of people he considers "inferior." At times, certain prejudices become narrowly targeted. Because behavioral scientists have

UCR. The difference and changing definitions of hate crime across states is yet to be researched to determine any effects on the rates of reporting and unreporting. However, according to the FBI, the congress, for the purpose of national statistical collection, has decided to define hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation” (FBI.gov). It is suggested by a recent study (Harlow, 2005), that the criteria of a hate crime be uniform across the states. “Due to the difficulty of ascertaining the offender’s subjective motivation, bias is to reported only if investigation reveals sufficient objective facts to lead a reasonable and prudent person to conclude that the offender’s actions were motivated, in whole or in part, by bias” (Harlow, 2005). The two definitions should be similar if not uniform in order for an accurate data.

A hate crime is an illegal act that is specifically done to a type of group and for this instance, race and gender. The top two races that had the highest rate of victims were between blacks and white. The black race defeated every other race in victims by over 1,000 and having a total of 2,022 victims. Of anti-black or African American bias, 62.7 percent were victims of crimes motivated by their offenders. Second was the white race with a total of 734 casualties from hate crime. It is to no surprise that these two parties have the highest number of victims, because they are the ones who are most populated and have the most minorities within them.

This study investigated data regarding criminal offenses categorized as hate crimes that “are motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender 's bias against a race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or disability and are committed against persons, property, or society”, (Hall 2013) with a speculative focus upon the psychological typology of the offender. Findings yield five major categories of the offender: “thrill-seeking, reactive/defensive, retaliatory, mission, and bias peripheral/mixed” (Freilich 2013). The study yielded that individuals who commit hate crimes are not diagnostically mentally ill, but they do share characteristics of high levels of aggression and antisocial behavior, with childhood histories of parental or caretaker abuse, and use of violence to solve family problems. Findings are considered in terms of clinical intervention and risk assessment practices with hate crime offenders using a chi-squared test for nominal (categorical) data to determine whether an association between two categorical variables in a sample is likely to reflect a real association between these two variables in a population.

Throughout American history, violent criminal acts against a specific person or a group of individuals were just that, violent crimes. In the 1980’s, the term hate crime was born. The term hate crime was used by a group of advocates to describe a series of violent incidents targeting several minorities (Nij.gov, 2015). A hate crime is “a criminal offense committed against a person, property, or society that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender 's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation,

Pop culture has enlightened and exposed the world to the good, the bad, and the ugly under every circumstance, and people tend to be more provoked, influenced, and intrigued by the bad and the ugly rather than the good. One topic of pop culture that never fails to gain attention is violence in its many forms. While at a state of constant social change and adaptation, the population finds more and more disagreements on the ever-changing and conflicting views and beliefs of each individual, which can lead to violence in some, if not most cases. Hate crimes are crimes or actions motivated by certain disagreements among groups that typically involve some form of violence. This essay will discuss the violence in racial hate crimes against African Americans, because the violence in these hate crimes, both past and present, will help educate individuals about different racial perspectives on the claimed “unfair” or “unequal” treatment of the African American race compared to the treatment of whites in all aspects of society and life. In the United States, African Americans as a race haven been one of the main targets for violent racial and hate crimes. Racial violence and hate crimes against African Americans have been a part of the United States since the very beginning, with a spike in conflict around the 1960s era of the African American Civil Rights Movement, and are even portrayed now in current pop culture sources. Violence against African Americans in films like The Help (a