Accounting for Hate Crime

Recent years have seen increased attention to the problem of hate crime, including such crime motivated by anti-gay bias. Although there is a growing body of research regarding the context of hate crime offending, there is a relative dearth of work investigating the community-level context of anti-gay hate crime. The current study investigates the community-level determinants of anti-gay hate crime in New York City from 2006 to 2010, using data obtained from the New York Police Department (NYPD)'s Hate Crimes Task Force (HCTF), one of the nation's leading hate crime police units. Using a framework drawing on group conflict and criminological theories, the current study examines anti-gay hate crime as an outcome of gay visibility, social disorganization, and economic strain. It is hypothesized that greater gay visibility, as well as social disorganization and poor and worsening economic conditions over time will be associated with increases in anti-gay hate crime. Results show that gay demographics, measured by static visibility and increasing gay populations over time, are shown to consistently predict higher levels of anti-gay hate crime. Adding to the generally mixed findings on the role of economic conditions in explaining hate crime, this study also finds that anti-gay hate crime occurs in more disadvantaged communities and communities marked by poorer economic conditions. The findings show anti-gay hate crime to be an outcome of gay visibility, disadvantage, and poor economic conditions, indicating that anti-gay crime may be an angry response to the strains present in the community. The study concludes with a discussion of the findings and implications for policy makers and practitioners.

The experiences of victims show that in general, ‘hate crime’ offenders are not an aberration, or politically motivated extremists confined to the margins of society. Instead, many are ‘ordinary’ people who offend in the unfolding contexts of their everyday lives. The ordinariness of offenders and offending is arguably a further key dimension in the conceptualisation of ‘hate crime’, when victims' experiences are placed at the centre of understanding about ‘hate crime’. This line of argument is pursued in this chapter in the spirit of conceptualising ‘hate crime’ as a scholarly domain characterised by an analysis of the commonalities and differences between various forms of oppressive violence. In that spirit, this chapter unravels the situational dynamics of anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and other racist incidents, incidents against people with a disability and homophobic incidents. It illuminates the connections between background structure and the foreground of offender action in cases of ‘hate crime’, providing the missing link between the macro-societal ideological edifice and the micro-level actions of offenders.

The focused academic study of crimes committed by nation-states is now more than two decades old, spanning several generations of scholars and increasingly drawing on multiple theoretical positions. At its root is the attempt to push the boundaries of both academic and political discourses to provide a recognition of the most harmful actions as states as criminal in nature and to bring social scientific theories of crime and criminality to bear in the identification, analysis, and control of these events. The subfield developed out of white-collar crime studies, as a group of mainly critical scholars applied and revised conceptual and theoretical materials developed in the study of crimes of corporations (and their actors) to the behavior (and agents) of nation-states. Of course, not all scholars who approach the study of crimes committed by nation-states are tied to critical criminology. Some work has been published that looks at law violation by states criminologically from mainstream theoretical perspectives. As this article is situated in the discipline of criminology, there are some threads of research that it does not index. Criminologists are not the only scholars to research crimes committed by nation-states. Even though the field is highly interdisciplinary, areas of overlap with history, political science, and legal studies exist. While these bodies of work are beneficial and illuminating, this bibliography limits itself to work that has an explicit or implicit criminological foundation. While a section is included here on genocides and other mass atrocities, sources included are limited to those that somehow work within criminological theories or approaches. Thus, the massive literature on the Holocaust is excluded (save for the few criminological explorations), as is political science–based work on state violence and repression (i.e., the work of Gurr or Rummel).

Sex offender registration policies have expanded rapidly, now extending to adolescent offenders across the nation. Policies mandating registration are based, in part, on arguments that registration is needed to prevent dangerous sex offenders from committing additional offenses and that risk of registration deters would-be offenders from offending in the first place. Research suggests that registration does not serve the former specific deterrent function for adolescents, but less is known regarding the latter goal of general deterrence. The disciplines of criminology and developmental psychology both offer important theoretical perspectives, but these frameworks have yet to be applied to this unique context. Criminological theory on perceptions of sanction risk offers clear predictions about the potential for registration to serve as a deterrent for would-be adolescent sex offenders. Yet, the literature has not meaningfully acknowledged that (a) most adolescents are probably unaware of the parameters of registration (e.g., age restrictions, range of registerable offenses), and (b) even if adolescents are aware of registration risk, they are unlikely to be effectively deterred by it because of a variety of developmental vulnerabilities (e.g., psychosocial immaturity, perceived normativeness of certain nonviolent sexual offenses that can result in registration). We argue that key elements of criminological and developmental psychological theory must be integrated to gain a better understanding of whether sex offender registration policy can have a general deterrent effect for adolescents. We conclude with a call for interdisciplinary research that addresses the general deterrence gap and its role in guiding empirically driven policy reform.

Much of the existing research on hate crime focuses on the perspective of victims, while relatively little is known of the offenders. This study examines the prevalence of hate-motivated offending in the form of assaults and bullying, and variables that may explain some of the influences for such behaviour. It compares hate-motivated offenders to both non-offenders and offenders committing non-hate-motivated acts. Our data are based on a nationally representative youth survey collected in 2012 (n = 4,855) from Finnish students attending ninth grade (ages 15–16). It relies on three central theories in criminology: strain, social control and self-control theories. Frequent parental fighting, low parental supervision, low social control and male gender were significant factors in explaining hate crime offending. Our results suggest that the three criminological theories are relevant in the analysis of hate crime offending among Finnish youth.

The Rowman & Littlefield Handbook of Policing, Communication, and Society brings together well-regarded academics and experienced practitioners to explore how communication intersects with policing in areas such as cop-culture, race and ethnicity, terrorism and hate crimes, social media, police reform, crowd violence, and many more. By combining research and theory in criminology, psychology, and communication, this handbook provides a foundation for identifying and understanding many of the issues that challenge police and the public in today’s society. It is an important and comprehensive analysis of the enormous changes in the roles of gender in society, digital technology, social media, and organizational structures have impacted policing and public perceptions about law enforcement.

Feminist criminology represents an effort by social scientists to center research, teaching, and activism around issues of gender and justice. Feminist criminology as a whole stands as a critique of the sexist nature of theorizing within the discipline of criminology. The history of this movement extends back to the 1960s when scholars began testing the application of traditional criminological theories and applying the philosophical tenets of the women's liberation movement (also known as the second‐wave feminist movement) to female criminal offenders. Up until this time very little attention was given to women or girls in the justice system. Over the last four decades, feminist criminology has come to represent a conglomeration of conscientious efforts that focus on women and girls (and, to some extent, men and boys) in the justice system. The focus has extended beyond criminality to include the victimization of women and girls as well as women who work in criminal justice occupations. The intersections of race, ethnicity, social class, and sexual orientation with gender have also become significant to feminist criminological inquiries. A central tenet of such work, beyond theory development and empirical research, is activism (within both academe and the larger community).

Feminist criminology stands as a critique of the sexist nature of theorizing within the discipline of criminology. The history of this movement extends back to the 1960s and 1970s when scholars began testing the application of traditional criminological theories and applying the philosophical tenets of the women's liberation movement (also known as the second wave feminist movement) to female criminal offenders. Until this time, very little attention had been given to women or girls in the justice system, and that which did exist was discriminatory and narrow in application.

Drug courts were created to address the cycle of repeat offenses—often called the revolving door—in the criminal justice system. However, they were not originally based on a clearly defined criminological theory that explains how they work or how they are expected to change participant behavior. An array of perspectives has been applied post-hoc to explain how drug court functions are believed to drive participant behaviors, such as substance use and recidivism, though the full range, depth, and breadth of these perspectives are not yet fully understood. While drug courts have flourished based on their practicality, there is little consistency in their application beyond a general nod to the Adult Drug Court's Ten Key Components whose implementation can take varied approaches. A greater understanding of the criminological theoretical approaches to drug courts is needed because without foundational evidence for why drug courts should work, practitioners risk implementing programs that are insufficient, ineffective, or harmful. Using a mapping review methodology, we catalog the major criminological theoretical approaches used in the extant U.S.-based literature to explain drug court operations and to assess how these theories have been applied or tested in support of understanding behavior change among participants. The findings show that criminological theoretical approaches fall into six categories: therapeutic jurisprudence, traditional criminological theories, procedural justice, drug court models of function, theoretical integrations, and an ‘other’ category. We assess and critique each category and its evidence-base and use this data to propose future research directions. This mapping review is helpful to academics studying problem-solving courts and rehabilitation broadly. It is also useful to practitioners and policymakers who are concerned with how and why drug courts may, or may not, work in their jurisdiction, as theory helps us answer the why and how questions in criminology.

The goal of this chapter is to discuss the theoretical history of female crime and the relationship between traditional criminological theory and feminist criminology. First, a description of the characteristics and gender-specific variables of female offenders will be presented. Second, the history of traditional criminological theory and its ability to explain female criminality will be discussed. The chapter will then describe the current state of feminist criminological theory and its different forms. It will then conclude with a discussion of the advancements that have occurred within the field of feminist criminology.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to review the extant published literature using traditional criminological theories in an effort to explain police misconduct.Design/methodology/approachThis paper reflects a narrative meta-review of through a search of several academic databases (e.g. Criminal Justice Abstracts, Criminology: A SAGE Full Text Collection, EBSCO Host and PsychInfo). Twenty-nine studies, across six theoretical perspectives, were identified and reviewed.FindingsThe extant research generally suggests that traditional criminological theory is useful in explaining misconduct.Practical implicationsThe findings call on agencies to continually strengthen their recruiting and hiring processes to select recruits with suitable characteristics, and to improve their early warning systems to detect officers with patterns of problematic behavior. Also, the findings call for multiple avenues of future scholarship, namely, in theory development/integration and in refining the measurement of police misconduct.Originality/valueThis paper will be useful for researchers who wish to further explore the etiology of misconduct, and for police administrators who wish to reduce the prevalence of such behavior.

This article examines the well-documented relationship between early initiation or onset of criminal behavior and a heightened risk of involvement in offending. Previous research examining this question conducted by Nagin and Farrington (Criminology 30:235-260, 1992a; Criminology 30:501-523, 1992b) used data from the Cambridge Study in Delinquent Development and found that: (1) onset age was correlated with offending involvement; and (2) the correlation could be explained by stable individual differences in the propensity to offend rather than a causal effect of early onset age. In this study, similar analytic methods are applied to data from the Second Philadelphia Birth Cohort. This data set consists of all 13,160 males born in Philadelphia in 1958 who resided in the city continuously from ages 10 to 18, slightly more than half of whom were non-white. Information from each of the youths was collected from schools, juvenile justice agencies, other official sources and surveys. In a model that mimics previous analyses, we initially found that an early age of onset is associated with greater subsequent involvement in delinquent behavior. When unobserved criminal propensity was controlled, however, we found that a late rather than an early onset of delinquency was related to future offending. In finding a state dependent effect for age of onset, our findings are contrary to propensity theory in criminology. In finding that it is late rather early onset which puts youth at risk for future offending, our findings are contrary to developmental/life course theory. Our results are more compatible with traditional criminological theory that is friendly to state dependence processes, though they too have not to date articulated why a late onsetting of offending might be particularly criminogenic.

Although recent years have seen a great increase in the study of hate crime and terrorism, there is limited research to date that explores connections between hate crime and terrorism. This study uses a qualitative case-study method to explore the competing criminological theories of social learning and social control to investigate their utility in explaining radicalization among hate and terrorist violent extremists. Our analysis demonstrates important similarities and differences across ideology and offender types in their career pathways. We find support for the use of an integrated social control–social learning model to explain radicalization and the commission of extremist violence.

Traditional criminology is overwhelmingly offender-focused, with the primary question driving the field being, “What explains variation in criminal behavior—why do some individuals offend while others do not?” This criminology, which seeks to unearth the underlying causes of offending, provides us with many theories. Each theory identifies a unique variable or set of variables thought to explain an individual’s inclination to offend, or “criminality.” For example, theories suggest that low selfcontrol, school failure, peer pressure, unemployment, and community poverty—to name just a few—predispose one toward offending. Thus, individuals exposed to higher levels of such variables are presumed to be “at risk” of initiating or continuing criminal behavior. Approaches to crime prevention often follow suit by attempting to reduce or prevent criminality. In particular, (social) developmental crime prevention focuses on tackling the underlying risk factors for becoming an offender (e.g., Welsh & Farrington, 2012). Indeed, a whole host of programs or policies exist in an attempt to reverse the criminogenic risk factors identified by traditional criminological theories. Programs teaching social competency to youth, providing pre-school education to disadvantaged children, and (re)training potential employees for workforce demands are just but a few examples. A number of such programs have been shown to be at least modestly successful in reducing crime (see, for example, Losel & Bender, 2012; Schindler & Yoshikawa, 2012; Sherman et al., 1997). Still, the potential risk factors for offending are incredibly numerous, as indicated by the dauntingly long list of criminological theories. In fact, the recently published Encyclopedia of Criminological Theory documented nearly 300 such theories (Cullen & Wilcox, 2010). With so many potential causes of offending—and, thus, so many risk factors to address if criminality is to be prevented—it is no wonder that a significant number of individuals fall through the

Background: Traditional criminological theories often emphasize social and environmental factors in criminal behavior. However, early biological research, which was initially reductionist and focused on physical traits, has evolved significantly with advancements in genetics and neuroimaging techniques. This evolution has led to a more nuanced understanding of the role of biological factors in criminal behavior. Objective: This review aims to critically examine how genetic, neurobiological, and psychophysiological factors contribute to criminal behavior, and to explore the interplay between these biological predispositions and environmental influences. Methods: We systematically analyzed empirical studies that investigate the impact of abnormalities in brain structures, neurotransmitter systems, and genetic predispositions on antisocial behaviors, integrating these findings with socio-environmental conditions. Results: Findings from recent studies indicate significant contributions of abnormalities in brain areas such as the prefrontal cortex and amygdala, and dysregulation in neurotransmitter systems to antisocial behaviors. These biological factors, when combined with environmental influences, enhance our understanding of criminal tendencies. Conclusion: The integration of biological perspectives into criminological theories marks a significant shift towards a more holistic approach in the study of criminal behavior. This review advocates for the development of targeted intervention strategies and ethical policy formulations, emphasizing the potential of biological research to improve the efficacy and humanity of the criminal justice system. Ongoing interdisciplinary research and collaboration are essential to continue advancing our understanding and management of criminal behavior.