Week 8

Group 2

Katie Hayes

Christy Holodnak

Alex Hurlbert

David Killeen

Theo Krause

Layla McKinnon

Maria Ochoa

Individual perceptions of hate crime, legislative responses to hate crimes, prosecution of hate crimes, and hate crime typology.

Blee, K.M. (2007, October). The microdynamics of hate violence: Interpretive analysis and implications for responses. American Behavioral Scientist, 51(2).

The author of this article is affiliated with the University of Pittsburg. The author examines the link between the attitudes and actions of the perpetrators and the victims of hate crimes. The article does not explain or predict why or when hate crimes will occur, but provides an understanding of how hate crimes are interpreted providing meaning and action for both the victim and the perpetrators. The author uses two distinct sets of qualitative data on hate violence, Perpetrators and Victims.

First, to understand the perpetrators, she uses data from female rank-and-file members of different organized racist groups in America to understand how attitudes towards racial, ethnic, and religious groups relate in the practice of hate crimes. The data was gathered from intensive, unstructured interviews and chronological histories of 34 female members of many of the racist groups of America (i.e. Ku Klux Klan, Skinheads). The analysis of the interviews suggest two propositions, 1) Racial hatred can be an outcome as well as a motive for racial violence, 2) Violence can build racist groups as well as be an outcome of these groups.

Second, to understand the victim, she used a subset of data collected for a comparative case study project on “the consequences of ethno-violence in America. The data, even though it is not conclusive does suggest two propositions on how victims and their communities react to hate violence. 1) Victims and victim communities differ considerably in how they interpret hate violence and these interpretations change over time, 2) Responses to hate violence are sensitive to the victim enfranchisement and community context.

David Killeen

Craig, K. (1999). Retaliation, fear or rage: An investigation of African-American and White reactions to racist hate crimes. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 14, 138- 151.

Kellina M. Craig, a psychology professor at California State University, Long Beach examines in his article Retaliation, Fear, or Rage An Investigation of African American and White Reactions to Racist Hate Crimes (1999) participants emotional response to hate crimes and whether the race of the victim and observer affects the sentencing. Before the experiment was conducted three ‘blind’ research assistants identified the scene in which the perpetrators were a different race than the victim as hate crime and did not do so for the scene in which they were of the same racial status as the victim (Craig, 1999). In his study, Craig had participants; both African American and white watch two different videos of a victim being attacked. Although the race of the perpetrators varied, the victim was always the same of the participant watching the video. Participants had almost identical reactions to both the hate-motivated assault and the assaulted that was not hate-motivated. The difference though could be found in sentencing, African Americans and white participants both were more likely to suggest longer sentences for the assault that they viewed as a hate crime.

Alex Hurlbert

Franklin, K. (2002). Good intentions: The enforcement of hate crime penalty-enhancement statutes. American Behavioral Scientist, 46(1), 154 - 172.

The author, a forensic psychologist based in the San Francisco Bay Area, cites numerous studies - and offers an interesting perspective - regarding the origins of hate crimes, the justice system’s response to such acts, and the surprising use of hate crime sentencing against the very groups that they were designed to protect.

Sentencing enhancements are a primary tool used by all but seven states to deter hate crime offending. The author points out that though on the surface the justice system is taking a proactive, get-tough approach, the truth is that there is such discretion in the system that the policies often carry little weight, rarely lead to conviction, and can have the effect of reinforcing the offenders’ attitudes, even when they are appropriately applied.

Police, prosecutors and judges all wrestle with the problems of proving a hate crime, since evidence of racial, ethnic or gender bias is sometimes not the only motivation. There are other factors that can lead to a hate crime, such as perceived social and economic disenfranchisement. The author points out that hate crime frequency can also be affected by discretion and policy, with a kind of hate crime net-widening. It is ironic when policy doubles back with such rigidity that offenses against particular groups by members of the same group are categorized as hate crimes.

While the use of sentence enhancements does have a beneficial effect, the author cautions against a one-size-fits-all approach to dealing with hate crimes. Some civil rights groups claim that these hate crime policies direct society away from acknowledging deep seated inter-group differences and tensions by focusing on society’s most underprivileged individual offenders.

Theo Krause

Levin, B. (1999). Hate crimes: Worse by definition. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice, 15(1), 6- 21.

This article focuses on the legislation that has lead to the enactment of hate crime laws. By agreeing with some types of hate crime laws and not others, the Supreme Court has been able to more clearly define what is considered a hate crime. Based on the data provided by many studies, such as research by the National Institute Against Prejudice & Violence, hate crimes cause severe psychological trauma, often involve serial attacks and are more likely to involve attacks against people rather than property. These are some of the reasons that the author uses to justify treating hate crimes more severely.

The author, Brian Levin, is an attorney and professor of criminal justice/constitutional law in New Jersey. He is the director of the Stockton College’s Center on Hate and Extremism.

The author is a former New York City police officer and a graduate of Stanford Law School.

Christy Holodnak

Phillips, N. D. (2008). The prosecution of hate crimes, the limitations of the hate crime typology. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 1-23. DOI: 10.1177/0886260508317190

Phillips, a researcher in the Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice at St. Francis College, analyzed and coded court data taken from investigation and prosecution files on all bias crime cases referred to the local prosecutor in one New Jersey county over a four year period. The author tested the hypothesis that application of the hate crime typology developed by Levin & McDevitt could help determine the motive (thrill, retaliation, defensive or mission) and improve the chances for conviction in the prosecution of bias crimes within a given jurisdiction. Phillips found his hypothesis was not supported in that the typology was only useful in identifying and defining the most extreme incidences of hate crime. Findings by Phillips also showed that those cases where hate was the primary or clear-cut motive were more likely to result in conviction than those where it was only a peripheral element. The results of Phillips’ study have reinforced earlier findings by Martin[1] indicating that ambiguities in interpretation of bias crime laws as well as in community and law enforcement perception of these crimes can make uniform enforcement and successful prosecution difficult if not impossible in most cases.

Layla McKinnon

Saucier, D.A., Brown, T.L., Mitchell, R.C., & Cawman, A.J. (2006). Effects of victims’ characteristics on attitudes toward hate crimes. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 21(7), 890- 909.

The authors, researchers and professors at Kansas State University and the University of Kentucky, use data completed by surveys of 294 undergraduate students by usage of vignettes of court cases depicting racist defendants. The authors hypothesized that participants would punish crimes differently based on a situation in which the crime may have been hate motivated. The hypothesis was highly supported when the crime was simple assault, while the effects were fewer when the crime was an aggravated assault. Participants, without being informed that the perpetrator was tried for or found guilty of a hate crime, believed that hate crimes were more severe than crimes not motivated by hate. In contrast, there was no significant difference in penalty enhancement by participants when women were the victim(s). This may provide insight into the hesitancy that legislators have shown in their willingness to include gender as a category that would be protected by hate crime legislation.

Katie Hayes

Saucier, D., Hockett, J., & Wallenberg, A. (2008, May). The impact of racial slurs and racism on the perceptions and punishment of violent crime. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 23(5), 685-701.

This study examined four factors that influence white people’s perception of and recommended punishment for hate crimes. Two-hundred twenty-five participants were administered survey questionnaires to assess how the race of the perpetrator and victim, the severity of the assault, the use of racial slurs during the commission of the crime, and the level of the participant’s racism effected the perception of a violent crime as well as the recommended punishment for that crime. The results of the study confirm that White people’s perceptions of hate crimes are significantly influenced by each of the four above-mentioned factors. The authors suggest that more research is needed to fully understand, first, how a crime is labeled as a hate crime and, second, the rationale for penalty enhancement statutes pertaining to crimes perceived as hate crimes.

Maria Ochoa

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[1] Martin, S. (1995). A cross-burning is not just an arson: Police social construction of hate crimes in Baltimore County. Criminology, 33, 303-326.