The Birth and Maturation of Hate Crime Policy in the United States - Term Paper Example

Hate Crimes Hate crimes are committed against individuals because they belong to a certain minority group. Hate crimes have persisted in history and its persistence in the United States of America (USA) is no exception. Hate crimes have now been identified as a major social problem but despite laws to combat it, still continue to be present today. Hate crimes affect entire societies and build up a feeling of fear, powerlessness and sometimes tend to spur on more hate crimes. They are truly reprehensible in nature as the people who are affected have no way of changing the feature about them that was attacked. In this paper, hate crimes will be discussed and why these crimes should receive a higher sentence than crimes that were not motivated by bias. Hate crimes are committed as a result of bias or bigotry, which is both inherently, learned behaviour (Spillane, 1995 from Steinberg et al, 2003, Card, 2001). Crimes are generally based on a victim’s race, sexual orientation, religion, disability, ethnicity, national origin (Torres, 1999) or gender (McPhail and DiNitto, 2005). Hate crimes encompass crimes from murder to vandalism, the common link being that they were motivated by bias. Most hate crimes are committed by a group of people and target property though some target individuals (Steinbery et al, 2003). Hate crimes are often carried out as a result of a number of prejudices which are difficult to pinpoint exactly. They can often have a domino effect in that one act of violence can lead to many more. This was the case in the hate crimes that ensued after the September 11th attacks on the USA (Steinberg et al, 2003). Hate crimes can lead to a culture of fear and hostility in society and gnaw away at the fabric of society. They not only affect individual victims but target society as a whole. They will tend to have upsetting and persistent effects on the families of victim, institutions to which they belong and they communities which they are from (Hutson et al, 1997 from Steinberg et al, 2003). Hate crime has persisted in America for quite a while (Steinberg et al, 2003). However, the title of hate crimes has is a socially-constructed idea that has only happened recently (McPhail and DiNitto, 2005). Hate crimes are different from other types of crimes in three main ways. 1. Thought hate crimes often target individuals, they are actually an attack against a particular group of people and are to send a message to that group (Hutson et al, 1997,Downey et al, 1999, Mannat et al, 1994 from Steinberg et al, 2003) 2. The motivation for the attack on a particular individual is generally a feature of themselves that they cannot modify (for example, race). The probability of attacks in the future cannot be reduced due to this (Levin & McDevitt, 1999 from Steinberg et al, 2003). 3. As the victim was only picked because of the feature of themselves, such as race, and not any unique characteristics, the attack could have been against anyone from that group (US Department of Justice, 1997, Levin & McDevitt, 1999 from Steinberg et al, 2003). Hate crimes only were differentiated from other crimes and identified as a major social problem after the passing of the ‘Hate Statistics Act’ in 1990 (Nolan et al, 2002). After the passing of this act, there has been much data collected all over the USA on the characteristics of hate crime. In general, some of the major characteristics include: crimes against race are the most commonly committed hate crime, hate crimes usually target individuals belonging to a certain minority group, most of the perpetrators of hate crimes are White, crimes based on sexual orientation appear to be on the increase where as the other forms are fairly constant or even declining and finally hate crimes do not seem related to other types of crime that are used to rate the volume of crime in the USA and termed index crimes (Nolan et al, 2002). In addition, it has recently been observed that youth tend to be more prone to commit hate crimes (Steinberg et al, 2003). The number of hate crimes that occur in the USA each year is a much disputed figure. As per the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, this data must be included in the Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) every year (Jenness, 1999 from Zaykowski, 2010). These records indicated that in 2006, approximately 8000 hate crimes were reported to the police (U.S Department of Justice, Bureau of Statistics from Zaykowski, 2010). Other estimates are much higher though. The Bureau of Justice even indicated that as many as 200, 000 are prone to hate crime violence every year (Harlow, 2005 from Zaykowski, 2010). The primary reason for this vast difference in the number of official and unofficial figures are mainly because many crimes are never reported (Zaykowski , 2010). Research has indicated that the reason many of these crimes go unreported is because minorities lack confidence in the police. The police are partly to blame for this as there has been history of racial profiling, under-policing or not protecting minorities, use of too much force and over-policing in some cases (Blee, 2005, Perry, 2001, Perry, 2002 from Zaykowski 2010). It must be mentioned that anti-race crimes are the predominant forms of hate crimes and the percentage against Blacks is very high (Harlow, 2005; U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2006 from Zaykowski, 2010) and there is definitely mistrust between Blacks and the police. To fully understand and appreciate the nature of hate crimes and why they should have harsher sentences than other crimes requires a look at the people who fall victim to these reprehensible crimes. Race is the number one factor and Blacks are still targeted in the USA in many instances. Between the years 1992 and 1996, crimes against Blacks increased by 52%. In addition, disabled people, who are amongst some of the most vulnerable in society, are very likely to be subject to hate crimes. In several cases, there are no arrests made in hate crimes against disabled people as they are deemed a liability in court. Figures estimate that a disabled person is up to 10 times more likely to be assaulted when compared to person who is not disabled (Sobsey, 1994 from Macmahon et al, 2004). Another group that is at much risk at suffering from hate crimes in USA are groups belonging to a minority sexual orientation. 20% of this population has been the victim of a crime against them after the age of 18 due to their sexual orientation (Herek, 2008). A staggering 55% said they felt stigmatized and hence vulnerable as a result of their sexual orientation. Gay men appear to be at a higher risk than lesbians or bisexuals, presumably because they are more likely to frequent gay-oriented venues and because men are often the victims of violent crimes (Herek, 2008). One a hate crime is committed; it is up to the responding officer to determine whether the crime was in fact motivated by bias. There is a follow up review with several criteria that must be met to decide if the case should be treated as one that is a hate crime (MacMahon et al, 2004). The laws for dealing with hate crimes are different from one state to the next. Once established that a hate crime was in fact committed, prosecutors have the task of deciding whether to attach a ‘penalty enhancement’ to the case (Franklin, 2002). Several states have penalty enhancement statutes which increase the possible penalty for a hate crime in one of two ways. The first is that penalties can be increased by assigning a superior sentencing range for hate crime. The second is by upgrading the crime to a higher class of crime that carries a more serious sentence (Grattet et al, 1998 from Franklin, 2002). In one of these two ways, penalties are increased if the crime is a hate crime. Defence attorneys loathe having a crime labelled as a hate crime as the law allows more severe punishment. It must be made mention of that while penalty enhancements were initially passed to reduce hate crimes, they are very difficult to take to court. One factor that causes a lot of limitations is that proving that a person is actually biased towards another person is difficult issue (Franklin, 2002). Penalty enhancements receive much attention simply because they are sometimes believed to have the opposite of the desired effect. Instead of lowering hate crimes, they actually increase it. In fact, offenders who were in prison for hate crimes felt they were being unfairly stigmatised by the social elite (Franklin, 2002). In addition, there has been mush discussion about whether they are actually working against the minority groups they were meant to protect. A Black person who launches a racially motivated crime against a White person is likely to get a harsher sentence due to class biases (Franklin, 2002). In addition, there is great worry that penalty enhancements will lead to increased hostility between different minorities (Franklin, 2002). On the flip side of the coin, penalty enhancement has met some of goals it was meant to. It has attracted the attention of public (Franklin, 2002) and it is a hope that increased education in the future will lead to less hate crime and less of a need for enhancements (Steinberg et al, 2003). There has been a lot of data collected on this topic as a result of the penalty enhancements which is insightful. In addition, perpetrators of these hateful acts are given more prison time and they are unable to commit hate crimes in this time (Franklin, 2002). It has been argued that the laws that govern hate crimes do not help the victims enough. It has been suggested that there needs to laws in place to allows hate crime victims better access to counselling and services that they require (Gratett and jenness,2001) following the derogatory crime committed against them. To conclude, hate crimes can range from a wide range of crime but are all motivated by prejudice or bias against a group of people, usually a minority. Crimes of this nature, while targeting individuals, tend to affect society as a whole. Even if one person is attacked, it is to send a message to the entire group and this can result in building up fear, helplessness and sometimes even retaliation. Some groups are more prone to hate crimes than others in the USA and these groups report feeling stigmatised. The Hate Crime Statistics law came into effect in 1990 and was the first step towards tackling the issue of hate crimes. Unfortunately, the numbers of people who are actually victims of hate crimes in the USA is in doubt as not all the crimes are reported. Official estimates are much lower than unofficial estimates. The Hate Crime Statistics law allows perpetrators of hate crimes to be given penalty enhancements- that is, they can potentially serve more time for the same crime if it was motivated by bias. While this concept of penalty enhancement has had some success in the way that social awareness was increased, there is increasing research done on this and that perpetrators are put away for a longer period of time, this does not really seem to be a hindrance against crimes at an individual level. In fact, people who are in prison and serving a longer time tend to report feeling stigmatised and there are worries this will increase the barriers between different social groups. Whilst this may be true, hate crimes are indeed reprehensible as they are based on prejudice and deserve to receive a harsher punishment than other crimes. Bibliography Card, C. (2001) “Is Penalty Enhancement a sound idea?”. Law and Philosophy 20, 195–214. 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