Hate crime
Hate crime in criminal law means a standard offence with an added element of bias against a victim because of their physical appearance or perceived membership of a certain social group. Examples of such groups can include, and are almost exclusively limited to race/ethnicity, disability, language, nationality, physical appearance, political views, political affiliation, age, religion, sex, gender identity, or sexual orientation.
Hate crime should be distinguished from hate violence, or hate incidents, which might not necessarily be criminalized. Incidents may involve physical assault, homicide, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, mate crime, or offensive graffiti or letters. Non-criminal actions that are motivated by these reasons are often called "bias incidents".
For example, the criminal law of the United States, the Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a hate crime as a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. Hate itself is not a hate crime, but committing a crime motivated by bias against one or more of the social groups listed above, or by bias against their derivatives constitutes a hate crime. A hate crime law is a law intended to deter bias-motivated violence. Hate crime laws are distinct from laws against hate speech: hate crime laws enhance the penalties for conduct which is already criminal under other laws, while hate speech laws criminalize a category of speech. Hate speech is a factor for sentencing enhancement in the United States, distinct from laws that criminalize speech.
Hate crime in the United States
The term "hate crime" came into common usage in the United States during the 1980s, but it is often used retrospectively in order to describe events from before that era. From the Roman persecution of Christians to the Holocaust, hate crimes were committed by individuals as well as governments long before the term was commonly used. A major part of defining crimes as hate crimes is determining that they were committed against members of historically oppressed groups.During the past two centuries, typical examples of hate crimes in the U.S. include the lynching of African Americans, largely in the South, lynchings of Europeans in the East, and lynching of Mexicans and Chinese in the West; cross burnings to intimidate black activists or drive black families out of predominantly white neighborhoods both during and after Reconstruction; assaults on LGBTQ people; the painting of swastikas on synagogues; and xenophobic responses to a variety of minority ethnic groups.
The verb "to lynch" is attributed to the actions of Charles Lynch, an 18th-century Virginia Quaker. Lynch, other militia officers, and justices of the peace rounded up Tory sympathizers who were given a summary trial at an informal court; sentences which were handed down included whipping, property seizure, coerced pledges of allegiance, and conscription into the military. Originally, the term referred to the extrajudicial organized but unauthorized punishment of criminals. It later evolved to describe executions which were committed outside "ordinary justice". It is highly associated with white suppression of African Americans in the South, and periods of weak or nonexistent police authority, as in certain frontier areas of the Old West.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, violence against people of Chinese origin significantly increased on the background of accusation of spreading the virus. In May 2020, the Polish-based "Never Again" Association published its report titled The Virus of Hate: The Brown Book of Epidemic, that documented numerous acts of racism, xenophobia, and discrimination that occurred in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as cases of spreading hate speech and conspiracy theories about the epidemic by the Alt-Right. In the U.S., this wave of hate brought back old and harmful stereotypes. The idea of the "Yellow Peril," the belief that Asians are a threat to Western society, reappeared in news stories and social media, reinforcing long-standing fears and suspicions. At the same time, the "Model Minority" myth made it harder for people to see the very real struggles Asian Americans face, painting them as silent and successful, and often excluding them from conversations about racial injustice. As a result, Asian Americans across the country experienced a dramatic rise in hate crimes, from verbal abuse and being spit on to physical attacks in public places. Elderly individuals were especially targeted, with several shocking assaults captured on video. Businesses were vandalized, and many people were harassed simply for wearing a mask or speaking their native language. These were not just random incidents, they were symptoms of deep-rooted racism that was reignited during a time of fear, uncertainty, and misinformation.
Psychological effects
Hate crimes can have significant and wide-ranging psychological consequences, not only for their direct victims but for others of the group as well. Moreover, victims of hate crimes often experience a sense of victimization that goes beyond the initial crime, creating a heightened sense of vulnerability towards future victimization. In many ways, hate crime victimization can be a reminder to victims of their marginalized status in society, and for immigrants or refugees, may also serve to make them relive the violence that drove them to seek refuge in another country. A 1999 U.S. study of lesbian and gay victims of violent hate crimes documented that they experienced higher levels of psychological distress, including symptoms of depression and anxiety, than lesbian and gay victims of comparable crimes which were not motivated by antigay bias. A manual issued by the Attorney-General of the province of Ontario in Canada lists the following consequences:; Impact on the individual victim: psychological and affective disturbances; repercussions on the victim's identity and self-esteem; both reinforced by a specific hate crime's degree of violence, which is usually stronger than that of a common crime.
; Effect on the targeted group: generalized terror in the group to which the victim belongs, inspiring feelings of vulnerability among its other members, who could be the next hate crime victims.
; Effect on other vulnerable groups: ominous effects on minority groups or on groups that identify themselves with the targeted group, especially when the referred hate is based on an ideology or a doctrine that preaches simultaneously against several groups.
; Effect on the community as a whole: divisions and factionalism arising in response to hate crimes are particularly damaging to multicultural societies.
Hate crime victims can also develop depression and psychological trauma. They suffer from typical symptoms of trauma: lack of concentration, fear, unintentional rethinking of the incident and feeling vulnerable or unsafe. These symptoms may be severe enough to qualify as PTSD. In the United States, the Supreme Court has accepted the claim that hate crimes cause 'distinct emotional harm' to victims. People who have been victims of hate crimes avoid spaces where they feel unsafe which can make communities less functional when ties with police are strained by persistent group fears and feelings of insecurity. In the United States, hate crime has been shown to reduce educational attainment among affected groups—particularly among black, non-Hispanic victims.
A review of European and American research indicates that terrorist bombings cause Islamophobia and hate crimes to flare up but, in calmer times, they subside again, although to a relatively high level. Terrorists' most persuasive message is that of fear; a primary and strong emotion, fear increases risk estimates and has distortive effects on the perception of ordinary Muslims. Widespread Islamophobia seems to contribute to anti-Muslim hate crimes, but indirectly; terrorist attacks and intensified Islamophobia serve as a window of opportunity for extremist groups and networks.
Typology of hate crime offenders
Sociologists Jack McDevitt and Jack Levin's 2002 study into the motives for hate crimes found four motives, and reported that "thrill-seeking" accounted for 66% of all hate crimes overall in the United States:- Thrill-seeking – perpetrators engage in hate crimes for excitement and drama. Often, there is no greater purpose behind the crimes, with victims being vulnerable because they have an ethnic, religious, sexual or gender background that differs from their attackers. While the actual animosity present in such a crime can be quite low, thrill-seeking crimes were determined to often be dangerous, with 70 percent of thrill-seeking hate crimes studied involving physical attacks. Typically, these attacks are perpetrated by groups of young teenagers or adults seeking excitement.
- Defensive – perpetrators engage in hate crimes out of a belief they are protecting their communities. Often, these are triggered by a certain background event. Perpetrators believe society supports their actions but is too afraid to act and thus they believe they have communal assent in their actions.
- Retaliatory – perpetrators engage in hate crimes out of a desire for revenge. This can be in response to perceived personal slights, other hate crimes or terrorism. The "avengers" target members of a group whom they believe committed the original crime, even if the victims had nothing to do with it. These kinds of hate crimes are a common occurrence after terrorist attacks.
- Mission offenders – persons commit hate crimes out of ideological reasons. They consider themselves to be crusaders, often for a religious or racial cause. They may write complex explanations for their views and target symbolically important sites, trying to maximize damage. They believe that there is no other way to accomplish their goals, which they consider to be justification for excessive violence against innocents. This kind of hate crime often overlaps with terrorism, and is considered by the FBI to be both the rarest and deadliest form of hate crime.
The motivations of hate-crime offenders are complex. Therefore, there is no one theory that can completely account for hate-motived crimes. However, Mark Austin Walters previously attempted to synthesize three interdisciplinary theories to account for the behavior of hate-crime offenders:
1. Strain Theory: suggests that hate crimes are motivated by perceived economic and material inequality, which results in differential attitudes towards outsiders who may be viewed as "straining" already scarce resources. An example of this can be seen in the discourse surrounding some people's apprehension towards immigrants, who feel as though immigrants and/or refugees receive extra benefits from government and strain social systems.
2. Doing Difference Theory: suggests that some individuals fear groups other than their own and, as a result of this, seek to suppress different cultures.
3. Self-Control Theory: suggests that a person's upbringing determines their tolerance threshold towards others, here individuals with low self-esteem are often impulsive, have poor employment prospects, and have little academic success.
Walters argues that a synthesis of these theories provides a more well-rounded scope of the motivations behind hate crimes, where he explains that social, cultural, and individual factors interact to elicit the violence behavior of individuals with low self-control.
Also, psychological perspectives within the realm of behaviorism have also contributed to theoretical explanations for the motivations of hate crimes particularly as it relates to conditioning and social learning. For instance, the seminal work of John B. Watson and Rosalie Rayner illustrated that hate, a form of prejudice, was a conditioned emotional response. Later on, the work of Arthur Staats and Carolyn Staats illustrated that both hate and fear were learned behavioral responses. In their experiment, Staats and Staats paired positive and negative works with several different nationalities. The pairing of verbal stimuli was a form of conditioning, and it was found to influence attitude formation and attitude change.
These studies are of interest when considering modern forms of prejudice toward ethnic, religious, or racial groups. For instance, there was a significant increase in Islamophobia and hate crimes following the 9/11 attacks on the United States. Simultaneously, the news media was consistently pairing Islam with terrorism. Thus, the pairing of verbal stimuli in the media contributed to widespread prejudice toward all Arab individuals in a process that is known as semantic generalization, which refers to how a learned behavior can generalize across situations based on meaning or other abstract representations. These occurrences continue today with the social and political discourse that contribute to the context in which people learn, come to form beliefs, and engage in behavioral actions. Although not all individuals with prejudicial attitudes go on to engage in hate-motived crime, it has been suggested that hate-crime offenders come to learn their prejudices through social interaction, consumption of biased news media, political hate speech, and internal misrepresentations of cultures other than their own.