Cause Of Hate Crimes

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.

While hate crime is a fairly new label for a crime, the existence of hate crimes has been present since the early days of the United States. Throughout US history, murders, assaults, and destruction of property has occurred against African Americans, American Indians, Irish immigrants, Asian Americans, Latino’s, gays, the mentally handicapped, and all other groups of minorities. Since the terrorist attacks on 9/11, there has been an increase in racial based attacks against those of Middle Eastern descent, whether they are Muslim or not. Of all of these, African Americans are subjected to the highest number of hate crimes (Martin 1996), with Muslims, homosexuals, and transgendered people on

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.

Many issues impacted by hate crimes can be informed by psychological research. For example, are hate crimes more harmful than other kinds of crime? Why do people commit hate crimes? What can be done to prevent or lessen the impact of hate and bias-motivated crimes? Social scientific research is beginning to yield information on the nature of crimes committed because of real or perceived differences in race, religion, ethnicity or national origin, sexual orientation, disability, or gender. Current federal law defines hate crimes as any felony or crime of violence that manifests prejudice based on “race, color, religion, or national origin”. Hate crimes can be understood as criminal conduct motivated in whole or in part by a negative opinion or attitude toward a group of persons. Hate crimes involve a specific aspect of the victim’s identity. Hate crimes are not simply biases, they are dangerous actions motivated by biases.

Critical preface: I choose to explore the hate crime problem in society. The reason I choose this topic is because hate crime is a brutal act against people, property, or society because of the group to which they are members or associate with. The hate crime is one of the most notorious crimes which leads to violent acts causing death and disaster. We need to stop these horrible acts and the solution would be to seek advice from an anti-hate organization which help us reduce hate crimes and factual information can then be spread to the society.

In today’s society the hate crime rate has dramatically boosted with the integration and diversity of various cultures. In fact, in 2012 over 5,000 hate crimes were reported in the United States. Statistics have concluded that out of the 5,000 hated crimes, the majority of them are related to racial discrimination, social discrimination, sexual discrimination, and economical discrimination. These crimes can range anywhere from physical and verbal assault, to vandalism, and robbery. Due to the inflation of these bias crimes, authorities are not able to demolish these immortalities from occurring. Out of the many bias crimes in America, I have narrowed my topic of research to the Wayne Community College massacre case.

     Hate Crimes are becoming more and more common in the United States. In a report released February 13, 2001, the FBI said 7,876 hate crimes were reported in the United State in 1999. The latest figures represent an increase over the 7,755 hate crimes reported in 1998, but the difference may not be significant because more agencies were reporting such crimes to the FBI in 1999. The figures are in the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics, an annual publication. Seventeen people were murdered in incidents classified as hate crimes, compared to 13 in 1998. Of the total the 7,876 incidents, racial bias was associated with 54.5 percent of the cases, followed by religious bias at 17.9 percent, sexual bias at 16.7, percent ethnic bias at 10.5 percent and bias against the disabled at .24 percent. Intimidation was the most frequently reported hate crime, accounting for 35.1 percent of the total. Vandalism accounted

Hate Crimes Prevention Act also provides authorities with a better picture of the prevalence of hate crimes by requiring local authorities to include hate crimes committed because of sexuality, gender, gender identity, and disability to the reports on local hate crimes that they send in to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Before the HCPA, hate crimes were already too prevalent in the United States, and the addition of these new classifications of hate crimes only added to the amount of hate crimes committed, giving the government and U.S. citizens a greater awareness of this problem. For example, of the 6,573 hate crimes committed in 2012, the top three motivations behind these acts were race (47.2 percent), religion (20.2 percent), and sexual orientation (19.7 percent) (“Hate Violence,”

In many cities throughout the United States, hate crimes are on the rise. A hate crime is a "traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a 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, 2012). Hate crimes have increased as the national conversation has grown less tolerant. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that hate crimes against Latinos, Muslims, and homosexuals have seemingly increased in recent years. However, whether hate crimes are actually on the rise is something that is debated; the upswing in reported hate crimes may be due to an actual increase in crime rates, but it could also be due to an increase in reporting.

Almost every person in America can pinpoint a time when they saw a news segment about some hate-based crime that was committed. Although some may argue that all crimes in the same category should be treated equally, hate crime should be punished more severely because the law requires it and it promotes safety and equality in communities.

Hate crimes are violations against the law that are motivated by a type of prejudice. 80% of these crimes include violence and are taken very seriously. In fact, they are the highest priority of the FBI’s Civil Rights program. They are essentially dangerous to the community because they encourage hatred and can even be classified as a form of terrorism. Since hate crimes have been on a rise since the mid 1900’s, law enforcement agencies have been forced to take action. As a result of the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, the FBI was able to investigate any biased crimes based upon race, ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or gender.

Tammy Thompson, I agree that it is the duty of a jury to present during trials. In 2006, the FBI reported 7,722 incidents of hate crimes. Fifty two percent were because of a person race, nineteen percent were because of the persons religion, sixteen percent because of sexual orientation, and thirteen percent because of their ethnicity (Hate Crime, n.d.). Hate crimes are committed for several different reasons some because they are ignorant about people who are different while others feel the need to look down on others to compensate for their own low self-esteem. Others may commit hate crimes because they have been victim themselves and see treating others the same way is all right to do (Hate Crime, 2017).

“ Crimes motivated by hatred, whether directed at the victim because of that person’s actual or perceived race, ethnicity, religion, or sexual orientation, can have a disproportionate impact on communities and pose unique challenges for investigators and prosecutors” (Wagner,2015). Out of the fifty states, six of them don’t have rules against crime based on a prejudice in contrast to culture,

Hate crimes have a devastating effect, beyond the harm inflicted on any, one victim ().  They resound through families, communities, and the entire nation, as others fear that they too could be threatened, attacked, or forced from their homes, because of what they look like, who they are, where they worship, whom they love, or whether they have a disability (). Hate crime is defined as an offense in which the victim is targeted because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or national origin of that victim (Sullaway, 2004). On the basis of the legal definition, most researchers of hate crime tend to conceptualize hate crime as a manifestation of intergroup conflict or violence (e.g., Levin & McDevitt, 2002; Levin & Rabrenovic, 2001). They are motivated by the distinctiveness of the victim(s)because the offender only targets victims with different groups (Sun, K, 2006) and they tend to justify themselves with numerous excuses, however, researchers have now been questioning the offender's mentality. With this sort of conceptualization of a hate crime and the reasoning behind them, it has then since begun to change clinical interventions with the victims of a hate crime and the research done is now focusing on the objective of the offender of a hate crime and distinctive factors or with lead to the offender's mentality.

In 1995 the FBI counted 7,947 incidents of hate crimes, and in 2013 they counted 5,928 incidents (www.nbcnews.com). These statistics show that the issue of discrimination has gotten better, but still an issue where more action needs to be taken. In the past, we got to see the true face of racial discrimination in Harper Lee’s famous novel, To Kill A Mockingbird. In this novel we could see how everyday interactions, romance and the criminal justice system were influenced by racism, and how people made decisions based on racial prejudice. Nowadays we know that many governments and groups are trying