Rosa Mistretta

Professor Shkorupa

Education 280

10 October, 2016

Hate Crimes

A Hate Crime is a criminal offense committed against persons, society, or property that

is motivated in, part, or a whole. It is by an offender’s bias against an individual’s or group’s

race, religion, ethnicity/national origin, gender, gender identity, age, sexual orientation, or

disability. (International Association of Chiefs of Police definition Turner, 2001). For you to be

able to have a hate crime you have to have committed a criminal act plus a perpetrator bias

against a race, religion, disability, etc. Hate crime victims usually have severe psychological

damage. This is why many people think that that the penalty should be harsher. One example

could be the “LGBT” victims that suffer more damaging psyche outcomes than any other

victims. Hate Crimes are unique, based on the community who share victim’s characteristics,

feel victimized as well, they create community-wide unrest.

Hate Crimes are terrifying and traumatizing for victims, “The physical and Psychological

brutality of hate crimes described in interviews has important consequences for victims, it results

in heightened and prolonged psychological distress after the crime” (Herek et al, 2012). The

most common act in hate crimes is violence and therefore the penalty should be increased for

those perpetrators, all hate crimes are especially brutal or injurious(90 percent all the hate
crimes). In 2011 and 2012 they were violent and only 24 percent of the 90 for non-hate crime

counterpart (Dept. Of Justice, 2014) had lot of elements that you have to consider such as victims

feel traumatized and terrified, families of victims often feel frustrated and powerless in the

community who shares same aspects of the hate crime you will see characteristics that they may

feel victimized and vulnerable, can escalate and prompt retaliatory actions, creates a

community-wide unrest, and they are horrible.

There is a discrepancy between the FBI and the Dept.of Justice in their methodology of

dealing with this topic. The FBI only counts hate crime as incident investigated, prosecuted, and

reported. On the other hand the Dept. of Justice criteria only involves victim perception of

bias-motivated crime, historical one of the reason why hate crime is taken so seriously is because

the fear and hate have been successfully exploited by thousands of years for leaders. Hate is

similar to a fire; it can quickly escalate and light up into violence. Also, a hate crime is way too

out of proportion to compare to the crime itself.

Hate crimes can be range from a simple vandalism to genocide. Some examples of hate crime

that had made a big impact on the world are the Romans and the Christians in 64 A.D. A fire in

Rome destroyed much of the city, Emperor Nero quickly blames the Christians for starting the

fire. His tactic was to place the blame on others and using a scapegoat was highly successful

Roman persecution of Christians continue for several centuries.

Another hate crime that has made a big print is Hitler in 1930’s. The German people after World

War I felt powerless and defeated. Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party repeatedly blamed Jews and

others for Germany’s problems. It was another successful tactic looking back at the news of Nazi

Germany. The hate that he showed towards the Jewish community was obvious. One surprising
fact in the 1920’s is the Jewish community assimilate, even tho over six million were murdered,

in today’s day the ones that still living in Germany have good normal relationships after all. One

of the biggest and still exist over the years is the Ku Klux Klan, this is one of the most notorious

hate groups, was formed after the Civil War. Many of the south left powerless and weak, this

was the beginning of the KKK. In this year many people join this group. The fundamentals ideas

were mainstream (white) America. And they were very popular in the south as recently as the

1960’s.

Many other had suffered from hate crime like as an example in the 1940’s in Los Angeles Riots

against young Latinos were discriminated on their looks and how they dressed. For member of

some communities or groups this are bad memories even though it was some time ago, can seem

very recent they had to be very popular in the past that and it could be a remainder as they can

reappear again.

Various types of hate crimes : Crime of arson motivated by hate.

The crime of Battery motivated by hate.

The crime of murder motivated by hate.

This example of hate crime are the one with an increase of sentencing as hate crime laws punish

not only the criminal act but also the discrimination.

Some of hate crime profiles are Thrill Seekers: Drugs and alcohol can be a factor. People

would do it for a value. Juveniles and young adults fall into this category, graffiti and vandalism

are common and violence is often used against the victim.

People with a negative change in their lives. This type of people may resent growing economic

power of a particular ethnic group or racial or they believe there is a threat to their value of their

neighborhoods or their safety (wikipedia.com).

Conflicted offenders are those of the same protected class and are offenders because they

don’t want to identify or be identified with the group. Examples are a Jewish person joins a

neo-Nazi group or a person of mixed-race ancestry joins the KKK.

People with a Mission: sometimes this person work themselves and sometimes in groups, they

are believers that their group has a duty to suppress or hurt other groups, hate crimes are

becoming more evident as an example we have the Middle East and some parts of Europe.

As mentioned, some of these hate crimes occurred in the beginning of the humanity. There is

some, unfortunately, new ones that had left in our communities a big impact mentioning some of

them we have

September 11 Terrorist Attacks

According to Enkivillage.com September 11th, 2001, it is branded in the minds of the

world as the date of one of the worst crimes in history. On this day, four commercial airliners

were hijacked by terrorists. Two were flown into the World Trade Center Twin Towers in New

York. The third into the Pentagon and the fourth crashed in a field after passengers attempted to

wrestle control from the hijackers. In total, 2,996 people were killed, including almost 400

firefighters and law enforcement personnel, whilst over 6,000 others were injured and almost

18,000 people have developed health issues as a direct result. There should be no one that ever
wants to the victim or hears such a tragedy again. God bless http://www.enkivillage.com.

Another hate crime not too long ago and not much news spread, according to Wikipedia.com,

Channon Gail Christian, 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom, Jr., 23, were an unmarried couple

from Knoxville, Tennessee. They were kidnapped the evening of January 6, 2007, when

Christian's vehicle was carjacked, and taken to a rental house, where both of them were raped,

tortured, and murdered. Five people were arrested and charged in the case. The grand jury

indicted four of the suspects on counts of capital murder, robbery, kidnapping, rape, and theft,

while a fifth was indicted on federal charges of carjacking.

Of the four charged at the state level, three (Letalvis D. Cobbins, Lemaricus Davidson, and

George Thomas) had multiple prior felony convictions. After a jury trial, Lemaricus Davidson

was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection. Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas

were convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Vanessa

Coleman was convicted and sentenced to 53 years in prison for facilitating the crimes, and Eric

Dewayne Boyd was convicted and sentenced to 18 years in federal prison for being an accessory

after the fact to carjacking.

The state convictions were all initially set aside because of misconduct by the presiding judge,

who has since been disbarred. Retrials were originally slated for the summer and fall of 2012.

The orders for retrials of Davidson and Cobbins were subsequently overturned by the Tennessee

State Supreme Court, and their convictions and sentences stand. The Coleman and Thomas

retrials resulted in convictions, but with reduced sentences. Coleman's sentence was reduced to

35 years, and Thomas' sentence was reduced to life in prison with the possibility of parole

(wikipedia.com).
The Charleston church shooting (also known as the Charleston church massacre) was a mass

shooting that took place at the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in downtown

Charleston, South Carolina, United States, on the evening of June 17, 2015. During a prayer

service, nine people were killed by a gunman, including the senior pastor, state senator Clementa

C. Pinckney; a tenth victim survived. The morning after the attack, police arrested a suspect,

later identified as 21-year-old Dylann Roof, in Shelby, North Carolina. Roof later confessed that

he committed the shooting in hopes of igniting a race war.

The United States Department of Justice investigated whether the shooting was a hate crime or

an act of domestic terrorism. It eventually indicated Roof was on 33 federal hate crime charges.

Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church is one of the United States' oldest black churches

and has long been a site for community organization around civil rights. Roof is to be indicted on

federal hate crime charges and has been charged with nine counts of murder by the State of

South Carolina. If convicted, he could face a sentence of death or thirty years to life in prison. A

website apparently published by Roof included a manifesto detailing his beliefs on race, as well

as several photographs showing him posing with emblems associated with white supremacy.

Roof's photos of the Confederate battle flag triggered debate on its modern display

(wikipedia.com)

They are many other crimes too many to count like the murder of the President John F.

Kennedy, the murder of Martin Luther King Jr, the murder of Abraham Lincoln and so on.

Hate crimes have been part of for history and other countries as well. We just need to take a look

at the Middle East countries to see the popularity of hate crimes. America has made great

progress and hate crimes are only in 45 states and the District of Columbia have statutes
criminalizing various types of bias-motivated violence or intimidation for a hate crime(the

exceptions are Arkansas, Georgia, whose hate crime statute was struck down by the Georgia

Supreme Court in 2004, Indiana, South Carolina, and Wyoming)they all protect race, religion,

and ethnicity but some of them still have to work in the sex gender identity (Wikipedia.com).

One law was passed not too long ago in the 1900’s by Federal Matthew Shepard and James

Byrd Jr. It was the hate crimes prevention act.

Which will spend protection and power would close the loopholes and cracks to protect

vulnerable people where states do not have laws, do not protect a certain group, lack of sources,

etc.

Some of the current federal crime legislation laws are in 1994 hate crime sentencing

Enhancement Act, 1994 Violence Against Women Act, 1997 Church Arson Prevention Act

(ADL,2012; Dumbar, 2006). The biggest was in 1990. Hate Crime Statistics will require U.S

Department of Justice to collect data on hate crime from law enforcement and publish

results(State to report incidents to FBI (Gerstenfeld, 2004;Turner, 2001), and finally hate crime

was officially named by the U.S. Judicial System (Wills, 2008).

According to Las Vegas Sun Newspaper, after race and ethnicity, the main motivators for race

crimes are religion and sexual orientation. Across crime categories throughout the valley,

incidents dealing with race and ethnicity also had the biggest drop, down 19 total incidents from

54, or 43 percent.

We have learned about the hate crime definition, history, some laws, and how to recognize hate

crimes. Although hate crimes happen less, we have to keep in mind to act fast and take them

seriously. Some people have controversy based on the new hate crime act they think that
political correctness is separating our community thinking that if they protect some crimes more

than others to make them equal they are losing equality and the other became less equal for that

reason they believe that we should treat all these types of crime under the same umbrella with the

same laws of penalty to avoid the disintegration of our country. Sometimes the community

thinks that since others had more rights that them, it would help to create hate between

communities. I personally dislike hate crimes.

I hope that we are all aware on what we can do to prevent the spread of hate motivated

behavior, and how can we enhance our students thinking and behaviors to have a better

understanding of diversity and acceptance

Latest Hate Crime Statistics 2014
 Works Cited

International Association of Chiefs of Police definition Turner, 2001.

www.Department​ofJustice.com(Herek et al, 2012)

Dept. Of Justice, 2014 ​www.Department​ofJustice.com

Wikipedia.com History of Hate crime.

Enkivillage.com September 11th, 2001

Wikipedia.com,Channon Gail Christian, 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom, Jr., 23,

Wikipedia.com The Charleston church shooting

ADL (ADL,2012; Dumbar, 2006).

departmentofjustice.com​ (Wills, 2008)

www.fbi.gov