Hate Crimes - Elements Of Bias Crimes, How Bias Crimes Differ From Other Crimes, Scope Of The Problem
motivated victim hatred term
A hate crime is a crime committed as an act of prejudice against the person or property of a victim as a result of that victim's real or perceived membership in a particular group. Many of the most notorious hate crimes have been murders, such as the racially motivated murder of James Byrd, Jr., in Texas in 1998 or the homophobicmotivated murder of Matthew Shepard in North Dakota later that same year. The vast majority of hate crimes, however, are cases of assault or vandalism.
The critical identifying element of hate crimes is the bias motivation of the perpetrator. The distinguishing factor can be obscured by the very term hate crime, which is the popular term used in connection with bias-motivated violence. In fact, bias crime is a more accurate label. Many if not most crimes are motivated by hatred of one kind or another. Not every crime that is motivated by hatred for the victim is a bias crime. Hate-based violence causes a bias crime only when this hatred is connected with antipathy for a group, such as a racial or ethnic group, or for an individual because of membership in that group. In some form, virtually every state in the United States expressly criminalizes bias crimes.
SYMPOSIA
"Penalty Enhancement for Hate Crimes." Criminal Justice Ethics 11 (1992): 3–63.
"Papers of a Symposium on Hate Crime Legislation: Hate Crimes—Propriety, Practicality and Constitutionality." Annual Survey of American Law 93 (1992): 483–636.
CASES
Apprendi v. New Jersey, 120 S. Ct. 2348 (2000).
Barclay v. Florida, 463 U.S. 939 (1983).
Dawson v. Delaware, 503 U.S. 159 (1992).
Jones v. Alfred H. Mayer, 392 U.S. 409 (1968).
R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, 505 U.S. 377 (1992).
Runyon v. McCrary, 427 U.S. 160 (1976).
Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 508 U.S. 476 (1993).
Additional Topics
Bias crime statutes in the United States encompass crimes that are motivated by the race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or religion of the victim. Many reach sexual orientation or gender as well, and some include other categories such as age or disability. Bias crime laws may either create a specific crime of bias-motivated violence or raise the penalty of a crime when committed with bias mot…
The justification for bias crime laws turns primarily on the manner in which bias crimes differ from other crimes. Bias crimes cause greater harm than parallel crimes, that is, those crimes that lack a prejudicial motivation but are otherwise identical to the bias crime. This is true on three levels: harm to the individual victim, the victim's group or community, and the society at large. B…
Although there is some reason to believe that the level of bias crimes increased over the last two decades of the twentieth century, it remains difficult to gauge whether the bias crime problem has actually worsened. During the 1980s, public concern over the level of bias-motivated violence in the United States rose dramatically. Such concern and the consequent enactment of bias crime statutes acr…
The enhanced punishment of bias-motivated violence has been criticized on a number of grounds. One critique argues that bias crime laws punish thoughts and not criminal acts. This critique itself takes two forms: a constitutional argument that bias crime laws violate the First Amendment right to free expression of ideas, and a criminal law theory argument that bias crime laws improperly focus on m…
Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith. Hate Crimes Laws: A Comprehensive Guide. New York: Anti-Defamation League, 1994. Bureau of Justice Assistance, U.S. Department of Justice. A Policymaker's Guide to Hate Crimes. Washington, D.C.: Department of Justice, 1997. ——. Punishing Hate: Bias Crimes Under American Law. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University press, 1999.…
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User Comments
about 2 years ago
dashaidanage
people who were involved in hate crime beatings should be evicted from their jobs and face the most notorious punishment of what the victim feels or chosen.
almost 5 years ago
Matthew Shepard was killed in Wyoming and died in Ft. Collins Colorado
about 5 years ago
Due to the belligerance of the united states government inticing charateristics of hate crimes toward the mexicano people and their boundies of evolving to humanity.