A Comparison of Juror Decision Making in Race-Based and Sexual Orientation-Based Hate Crime Cases.

The horrific stories of James Byrd Jr., Matthew Shepard and Stephen Lawrence are forever etched in criminal law. In each of these cases, activists, family members, politicians, academics, the public and media all reacted in their unique way to bring the problem of ‘hate crime’ onto the agenda. There are many other cases that have activated such a public imagination, or what we call ‘figurehead’ cases, yet the factors pertinent to figurehead recognition remain under-explored within hate crime scholarship. Using a case study analysis, three racist and heterosexist hate crime cases are examined in order to assess the individual and collective conditions that facilitated their place on the public agenda. This analysis has important implications for the category of ‘disability’, and highlights several shortcomings that forestall the recognition of ‘disablist hate crime’ publicly, legislatively and judicially. It is argued that the positioning of disability as ‘abject’ has inhibited the operationalization of disablist violence within the hate crime framework, and within criminal justice systems more generally.

PurposeWhile the significance of public cooperation for police effectiveness is widely acknowledged, less is known about factors associated with cooperation in hate crime cases. The current study aims to explore how individuals’ perspectives on police legitimacy, contact experience with police and race/ethnicity shape their willingness to cooperate with police in hate crime incidents.Design/methodology/approachThis study used a sample of 693 college students and was conducted at a public university in the south-central region of the southern United States of America. Ordinary least squares (OLS) regression models were used to examine factors related to willingness to cooperate with police.FindingsFindings show that those who have a high level of positive perceptions of police legitimacy and those who have a low level of negative personal experience with police reported more willingness to cooperate. Asian respondents were less likely to report that they would cooperate with police compared to white respondents.Originality/valueThis study, emphasizing the relationships between perceived police legitimacy and positive personal experiences with a willingness to cooperate in hate crime cases, has practical implications. The identification of racial/ethnic differences in cooperation attitudes, particularly the lower likelihood of cooperation among Asian respondents, contributed to the current literature and underscores the importance of considering diverse perspectives and outreach efforts.

Relatively little empirical research has been conducted on hate crimes. An issue that has previously remained almost entirely unexplored is what factors are likely to influence jurors' guilt determinations in hate crime cases. This article describes a mockjuror study that was conducted with 190 participants. Participants were given a hate crime vignette in which the ethnicity of the victim and offender were varied. Contrary to the original hypotheses, it was found that at least with this particular vignette, the offender's and victim's ethnicity did not usually affect the juror decisions. Furthermore, participants' level of racism was not related to their decisions on the juror task. The implications of the results are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research in this area.

Accurate and detailed information on the nature of hate crimes in the United States has been hindered by limitations in the compiling of hate crime statistics. The National Hate Crime Investigation Study (NHCIS) collected data from a nationally representative sample of law enforcement agencies across the U.S. about the numbers of hate crimes investigated during 2018. Results show differences in a variety of case characteristics across four major categories of bias motivation (race/ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation/gender identity, and disability). Results suggest that police may miss hate crimes with bias motivations that are not clearly connected to common culturally recognized indicators. Training around non-stereotypical hate crime cases may help to identify and strengthen hate crime evidence.

Prior studies document the complexity of hate crime determination by police. The likelihood of criminal justice intervention into cases of hate crime is influenced by several factors including the situational, officer, agency, and structural. While most work focuses on the hate crimes clearance via arrest and federal reporting compliance, there is limited attention on earlier points of police discretion in potential hate crime cases. To add, most scholarship has been focused on between-agency behavior while ignoring internal organizational processes that may influence hate crime police response. We employed a multilevel analysis of crime incidents from the Los Angeles Police Department to clarify the predictors of hate crime case funneling, focusing on the likelihood of official classification as well as police arrest. Our findings suggest some degree of neighborhood clustering and that police intervention into hate crime is constrained by a host of situational, organizational, and other environmental factors.

This study aimed to analyse the emergence and development of Disability Hate Crime as a policy area in the criminal justice system in England and Wales. It did this through building an understanding of the contributory factors including the challenges within the criminal justice system, wider government and politics, the independent statutory sector and disabled peoples organisations that led to the emergence and development of Disability Hate Crime policy and practice. This study contributes the first comprehensive analysis of the emergence and development of Disability Hate Crime in England and Wales to hate crime studies. Using a case study approach the thesis triangulates evidence from interviews in activist, policy and political streams, from hate crime cases and analysis of policy documents to chart this policy journey. It analyses the journey from agenda invisibility through agenda triggering to significant institutionalised actions on Disability Hate Crime in the criminal justice system, showing the roles of activism, politics and policy making in shaping this policy process. It underscores the analysis of this policy journey with a key focus on problematisation in policy making on Disability Hate Crime. This study found that Disability Hate Crime has faced challenges in its emergence and development as a policy area in the criminal justice system. It has faced challenges at each stage of the policy journey from initial agenda triggering, through agenda setting and onto agenda institutionalisation. This study concludes that Disability Hate Crime is an unsettled and unsettling policy agenda with agenda institutionalisation, as an established predictable area of policy and practice, some way off, despite legislation in 2003. The study found that: - Disability Hate Crime remains an unsettled policy agenda in that it displays an unsettled discourse, varied ways of responding, a need for ongoing national strategic action, and limited transition into day-to-day routine business. - Disability Hate Crime is an unsettling policy agenda in that it challenges understandings of hostility and prejudice beyond direct manifestations of hostility. It is also unsettling in that it raises a dual problematisation of targeted crimes against disabled people as either hostility targeting or vulnerability targeting. This reflects a wider dual problematisation of disability as either an issue of welfare or as an issue of rights. - Current understandings of disability hostility reflect under recognition of disability discrimination and linked ideologies of ableism and disablism. This under recognition of disability hostility lead to justice failures in Disability Hate Crime cases. Constructions of the targeting of disabled people in crime as based on vulnerability lacks recognition of such targeting as biased, hostile targeting of disabled people. This study reconceptualises disability hostility as hostility including vulnerability targeting. Arising from these conclusions, on an optimistic note, this study recommends a change to hate crime law which recognises that disability hostility can be based on hostility demonstration, a hostility motivation or hostile targeting because of disability. This study concludes that rather than institutionalisation of Disability Hate Crime as day-to-day hate crime business, it still remains unusual business. This study contributes a reconceptualization of the concept of disability hostility to include targeting because of disability – ‘disability vulnerability’. It makes the case for varied legal provisions to reflect the protection requirements of different hate crime strands. It adds to the body of case studies on public policy making. Finally, it illuminates the influence of equality law on Disability Hate Crime policy making.

1 Introduction 2 The Framework of Police Decision-Making in Hate Crime Cases 3 Integration and Hate Crime: The Institutionalization of Civil Rights Law 4 Investigation: Detectives and the Making of Hate Crime 5 The Difficulty of Hate Crime Investigation 6 Police Culture and Hate Crime 7 The Decision to Seek Charges 8 Prosecutors and the Courts 9 Conclusion

Hate crime and hate speech are extreme examples of negative intergroup relations. It is thought that it would be very useful to analyze the variables that lead up to for dealing with hate speech and crimes that have many physical and psychological destructive consequences for the exposed group members. Therefore, the aim of the present study is to address some of the social psychological variables associated with hate speech and hate crimes and to suggest solutions to reduce hate speech and hate crimes in this context. For this purpose, first of all, hate speech and hate crimes were defined and various examples were presented in this direction. Later, hate crimes and hate speech were examined in terms of social identity identification, social dominance orientation, system justification, realistic and symbolic threat perception, frustration and scapegoat concepts. The relationship between hate speech and crimes of this concept has been embodied with research findings and examples from various regions in Turkey and the world. Finally, some solution suggestions have been presented by making use of this theoretical knowledge in terms of combating hate crimes and hate speeches. Keywords: Hate crime, hate speech, intergroup relations, social psychology

This interview with writer and activist Harsh Mander was conducted on 21 and 23 April 2020 while numerous instances of hate crime, during the severe COVID-19 lockdown, were coming to light. This came on the heels of the popular protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019, and the February 2020 violence in Delhi. The interview situates the present moment, tying together history, socio-legal assessments of sectarian violence, evaluation of legal reform, and the ethics of anti-hate activism. First, Mander draws from his extensive experience — as a former bureaucrat, anti-hate advocate, and legal activist — to offer the larger historical trajectory of sectarian violence in India. His account highlights the role of the rising majoritarian state ideology in facilitating and celebrating sectarian hostilities. He also develops an account of how we should understand the social and personal harms of mass violence and the phenomenon of lynching. Second, he discusses the contentious question of legal reform for ending impunity in hate crime cases. Specifically, he notes the problem of state complicity in violence and the failed attempts to legislate an anti-communal violence law. Third, he elaborates on the protracted challenges of building viable strategies of litigation in the aftermath of sectarian violence. He evaluates Nyayagraha (literally meaning struggle for justice), his unique experiment after the 2002 Gujarat pogrom based on an ethical practice for legal justice.

The purpose of this article is to consider the possibilities and the legitimacy of using various forms of restorative justice in hate crime cases. Advantages of restorative justice programs as ways of responding hate crimes were especially explored and difficulties in implementing them for this category of acts were outlined. The conclusions drawn from the analysis might contribute to increased interest in the issue of combating hate crimes.

To compare law insight to the dimension of hidden intent in a hate crime. Therefore, if one is to consider a crime to be a hate crime, showing the intent of hatred is a fundamental part of this process. The study examines the proofs and legal challenges in establishing such intent, especially in the case of defendants whose misdeeds were previously referenced as using circumstantial evidence, like behaviors, racist discourse, and symbols of hatred. It further looks into the ethical and political influences on judicial processes, investigating how media, public opinion, and hate speech impact the reading of evidence. The study explores the comparison of the legal systems of the United States with those of the United Kingdom, France, and Germany. It ends by providing legal recommendations to improve mechanisms for demonstrating latent intent and guaranteeing the right to a fair trial in hate crime cases.

In England and Wales, Section 146 of the Criminal Justice Act 2003 made disability hate crimes legal. This advocated for increased sentencing for perpetrators whose crimes were motivated by or demonstrated hate against a person with a handicap or a perceived disability. Currently, this additional sentencing provision is the only legal option for prosecuting disability hate crime perpetrators. This thesis explores the experience and aftermath of hate crimes committed against England’s cognitively challenged senior victim group. The cognitively challenged elderly victim group is far more likely to face bias and violence; they have a greater likelihood of re-victimisation and suffer significant suffering as a result of hate crimes. To date, the voices of cognitively deficient elderly victims and survivors have been mostly absent from scholarly research and hate crime policies. As a result, the purpose of this article is to look into present policy barriers and how the cognitively challenged senior victim group might best receive support, justice, and interventions following discriminatory hate crimes. There has been little examination and discussion of intersectionality in disability studies and hate crime research. Common ideas fail to adequately reflect the multifaceted, overlapping, and complex experiences of danger and victimisation. This paper builds on studies on hate crimes against the cognitively deficient elderly victim group. It noted the challenge of categorising individual encounters as one type of hate crime. Victims and their relatives recognised that they were targeted for a variety of reasons, including their inability to care for themselves and their age. The study contends that the present strand-based approach to hate crime conceals a multitude of cross-identity characteristics that, when combined, might raise the danger of victimisation while decreasing a victim’s chance of reporting their experiences. To address vulnerability, safety, and hate crime against disabled people in England and Wales’ criminal justice, health, social care, and refuge systems, barriers to including the cognitively impaired senior victim group in the policy process are presented, allowing for targeted suggestions and changes on relevant issues.

ABSTRACTMinimal studies have investigated individuals’ evaluations of antigay hate crimes and hate crime legislation simultaneously, with most research focusing on one or the other. In a sample of 246 heterosexual undergraduates, the present study found that evaluations of antigay hate crimes and hate crime legislation were unrelated. Higher social dominance orientation (SDO) and crime control orientation scores were associated with more positive evaluations of antigay hate crimes. Positive evaluations of hate crime legislation were associated with more positive attitudes toward gay men and lesbians. We also found that the relationship between SDO and evaluations were mediated by crime control beliefs (for hate crimes evaluations) and antigay attitudes (for hate crime legislation evaluations). The present findings have possible implications for the manner in which organizations advocate for the extension of hate crime legislation to include sexual orientation.

Why are hate crime cases so rarely prosecuted? Most states and the federal government have hate crime laws on their books, yet available data indicate few prosecutions in most jurisdictions. Drawing on case files and interviews with police and prosecutors in one jurisdiction, three institutional impediments to hate crime prosecution are identified: evidentiary inflation, by which law enforcement uses a higher burden of proof than what is required by statute; loose coupling between police departments and prosecutors' offices; and cultural distance between law enforcement and victims. Findings also reveal that advocacy groups and media can successfully increase the visibility of cases and draw the attention of prosecutors. The findings align with aspects of legal endogeneity theory and enhance our understanding of the role of organizations in constructing the meaning of law. The results also help explain why some laws are rarely enforced, even when they have support from key personnel in an organization.

This paper discusses whether the methods of restorative justice (RJ), broadly interpreted as alternatives to criminal proceedings and sanctions, are applicable to hate crimes. It builds on the premises that RJ methods are appropriate tools to deal with hate crimes and conflicts that arise from them, as there are social conflicts behind these actions that can be resolved by a sensitive and empathetic approach that focuses on restoration. However, there are dilemmas and factors where caution and an in-depth reflection should be observed to understand how these techniques can work well without further harming either party.