Hate, Crime, and the Law
The emergence of Hate Crime Legislation in the U.S. occurred over a twenty
year period and spans 50 states and the federal government, and has left criminal justice
researchers asking three questions:. 1) Is the emergence of such anti-bias legislation the
result of unique aspects of the cultural and the political landscape of contemporary
American society? 2) What is the current incidence of hate crime events? 3) What can
we say about the effectiveness of hate crime legislation?
In response to the first question, about whether unique cultural and political
influences in American society made the decade of the 1990s a fertile atmosphere for
legal change, Jenness and Grattet (1996) respond in the affirmative. They argue that
hate crime legislation is often opposed by “both ends of the political spectrum” and is
best explained as the result of unique contemporary structural and political variables.
Conversely, Levin (1999) suggests the emergence of this legislation the “natural’
byproduct of already existing social and political movements? Levin (1999) points to
the justification for hate crime legislation dove-tailing with the existing laws that punish
discrimination in employment, education, housing and public accommodations.
One aim of this paper is to attempt to describe the emergence of hate crime
legislation in a comprehensive historical and social context. First, we will offer a brief
discussion of the embedded-ness of racial, ethnic, nationality, religious, sexual
orientation and physical disability biases in American culture. This history of
intolerance and bias serves as a foundation to understand the origin and nature of hate
crimes in current day America
. This section will include discussion of a series of
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America is called “melting pot” because it consists of various racial and ethnic groups.
There are numerous possibilities of conflicts among different racial and ethnic groups
for their own interests in the society. In this section, the issue in question is why the re-
conceptualization of inter-group violence as hate crime emerged in the United State and
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Convention