How Social Movements Matter: Including Sexual Orientation in State-Level Hate Crime Legislation

Author(s):  
Christie L. Parris ◽  
Heather L. Scheuerman
2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jace L. Valcore ◽  
Mary Dodge

Supporters of hate crime legislation argue the laws are a positive development designed to promote social equality and encourage political participation. Critics claim the laws are patronizing and disempowering. Existing research addresses neither the impact of hate crime laws on designated social groups nor attempts to verify assumptions about legislation and the social and political status of protected minorities. Sexual orientation, one of the most controversial categories, resulted in considerable social and political debate. This research explores the addition of sexual orientation to state hate crime law and how inclusion of this target group affects the social construction of gays and lesbians. Data are drawn from a sample of 12 daily newspapers in six states. Content and time-series analyses were used to explore social construction. The results indicate that inclusion in hate crime protections fails to have a positive impact on the construction of the group, and the discussion offers important policy implications.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-90
Author(s):  
Jen Neller

The implications of specifying certain identity categories have been widely debated in the context of hate crime laws and policies. However, they have been less thoroughly examined in the particular contexts of hate speech. Although the majority of laws regulating speech do not differentiate between identity categories, the ‘stirring up’ offences of the United Kingdom Public Order Act 1986 are stratified along grounds of race, religion and sexual orientation. This article argues that, while the concerns raised about identity categories in relation to hate crime legislation are equally relevant to the stirring up provisions, the proposed solutions cannot automatically be transposed to hate speech offences. Accordingly, this article explores challenges that are encountered in attempts to make hate crime and hate speech legislation more inclusive before advancing some tentative suggestions for how hate speech laws might move beyond identity silos.


2021 ◽  
Vol 72 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Schweppe

While hate crime legislation is well established in England and Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland, Ireland has failed to address the issue of hate crime on a statutory basis. Law reform processes are currently underway across these jurisdictions, and this article seeks to explore a fundamental question in this context, that is, the relative merits of various approaches to structuring hate crime legislation.


2019 ◽  
pp. 147737081988751
Author(s):  
Alexander Kondakov

This article presents the results of a study of the victimization of queer people in Russia before and after the ‘gay-propaganda’ bill was signed into law in 2013. Despite the development of hate crime legislation, few violent incidents against LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and questioning) individuals are recorded in the Russian legal system. An original method of court rulings analysis is put forward in order to move towards an actual number of criminal offences against these groups. All court decisions that mention non-heterosexual victims are reviewed to identify whether these cases could have been considered hate crimes. As a result, 267 first-instance criminal court rulings dealing with 297 LGBTIQ victims are identified in 2011–16. Descriptive statistical analysis demonstrates that the number of victims grew substantially after 2013.


Criminology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen E. Mills ◽  
Joshua Freilich ◽  
Steven Chermak

This article focuses on political crimes, specifically terrorism and hate crime. Both terrorism and hate crime are criminal activities that are often committed to further a political objective, as opposed to typical or regular crimes that are usually committed for personal reasons such as greed, revenge, or other personal motivations. Political motivations encompass ideological, social, and religious objectives. Several works (e.g., Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism; see Hoffman 2006, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime) examine the evolution of terrorism from ancient to modern times. While bias-motivated violence and hate crimes are just as old as terrorism, the United States did not formally adopt hate crime legislation, through the passage of a variety of substantive penalty enhancement and data collection laws, until the late 20th century. Making Hate a Crime (Jenness and Grattet 2004, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime) explores the history of hate crime legislation, highlighting how various civil rights and victims’ rights movements played a role in the passage of hate crime legislation. In the classic text Hate Crimes Revisited, Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt outline the history of hate crimes, explain why some persons are motivated to commit these crimes, and discuss efforts to combat them (Levin and McDevitt 2002, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime).


Legal Studies ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 215-238 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kay Goodall

‘Hate’ crime has attracted intense debate, but surprisingly little has been written on how best to draft and interpret hate crime legislation. The dominant conceptual models derive from US scholarship. Although valuable, they pay insufficient attention to principles of criminal law and to how hate crime law is perceived. This paper explores these problems through a discussion of legal approaches to, and lay perceptions of, racism, as embodied in the racially aggravated offence. It proposes a model which offers a more just alternative.


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