NCJ Number
157550
Journal
Prosecutor Volume: 29 Issue: 4 Dated: (July/August 1995) Pages: 20-22,24-25,31
Date Published
1995
Length
6 pages
Annotation
Hate crimes are directed against members of a specific group merely because of membership in that group; the basis of hate crimes may be the victim's age, race, gender, sexual preference, religion, or ethnicity.
Abstract
Laws enacted in response to hate crimes predominantly involve bias crimes and penalty enhancements. Bias crime laws include freestanding criminal prohibitions of racially targeted violence, while penalty enhancement laws rely explicitly on another criminal provision such as assault and increase the sentence if the assault is committed with bias motivation. At least 31 States have bias crime laws, and several Federal laws prohibit bias-motivated violence. Many observers believe that fewer hate crimes are being committed by members of organized hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and that more hate crimes are being perpetrated by individuals or small groups of people acting on their own. At least half of people arrested for hate crimes are teenagers and young adults between 16 and 25 years of age. Hate crime victims suffer from devastating injuries due to the randomness of hate crimes and the fact that victims are attacked because of some characteristic over which they have no control. Advocacy groups have emerged to help hate crime victims, provide statistical support and incident reporting to educate others about the prevalence of hate crimes, and train law enforcement officers. Once law enforcement has determined who has committed a hate crime, the prosecution must establish the defendant's motive. Because establishing a motive may be difficult, prosecutors can rely on certain indicators that a hate crime has occurred: common sense, suspect language, attack severity, lack of provocation, contact or prior history between victim and suspect, previous history of similar incidents in the same area, and absence of any other apparent motive. Stiff penalties may discourage potential hate crime perpetrators, and law enforcement officials need to communicate to the community that hate violence will not be tolerated. 29 references and 14 endnotes