week 10 legal dis

David Hayes I think that this is an interesting discussion and, as Dr. Gfeller intimated, it is equally as controversial as our other topics. In this case, though, I think it is due to the ambiguity involved. Like other areas in law, whether or not something is legally a hate crime is up to interpretation. As forensic psychologists, we are, hopefully, adept at controlling our biases, but that isn’t always the case with other officers of the court or legal practitioners. Therefore, without a cut and dried definition of what constitutes a hate crime, we are at loggerheads legally. Even from a psychological perspective, determining if something is a hate crime can be tricky since, at its core, we are dealing with intent. The intent of an offender is tantamount to hate crime determination. Without intent, or without ‘hate,’ then there is no hate crime. Even during an assessment of an individual, there is no black and white, numbered list of how, say, a personality disorder happens, or someone chooses to murder, so there is no way outside of direct evidence to determine the requisite hate before the crime. Therein lies the issue. Plumm and Terrance (2014) found that in either assigning blame in terms of a hate crime to an offender or the victim varies by the perceptions of a few things, most notably the sexual orientation of the victim and less so the nationality/race of the victim. That study was interesting and noted that, regardless of whether or not the victim’s lifestyle or ethnicity was the root cause of the issue and whether or not the jury approved of it, there was a willingness to convict by a jury. So, there is a generalized agreement on what a hate crime is, but that doesn’t help in determining intent. Dunbar, et. al. (2005) took another interesting look at hate crimes and the role of bias intent. This study noted that those individuals engaging in hate crimes are more likely to have committed previous crimes and have a propensity for criminality in general. What this study serves to do is to provide a background on the offender that further obscures the idea of intent. If the perpetrator of a hate crime is more likely to engage in generalized crime than other criminals, how can we differentiate between the two and is it just ‘another crime’ on their rap sheet? This idea of intent is not helped via legislation, either. The parameters are very vague. As an example, from the Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009, “(1) the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin of any person or (2) the crime was committed because of the actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of any person and the crime affected interstate or foreign commerce or occurred within federal special maritime and territorial jurisdiction” (U.S. Department of Justice, 2015). There are a lack of parameters of just how we are supposed to determine that intent. The example from our reading includes offenders with a social media post declaring war on Muslims, as an example, but absent something like that, we are now up to interpretation from a criminal justice practitioner of some sort. As we look at various areas, what does this lack of being able to gage intent do to sentencing or looking at punishment at being prohibitive for future hate crimes. Going back to Dunbar, et. al. (2005), the prevalence of hate crimes as conducted by offenders already engaged in general crime. That would indicate that there isn’t anything prohibitive, from that study, about hate crime punishment and, in fact, there is a level of victim blaming that takes precedence over the offender’s culpability. This is established in Cabeidue, et. al. (2018) and the establishment of the Hate Crimes Belief Scale. The scale is a good look at attitudes in terms of hate crimes, finding that blame attribution theory is especially relevant in instances of hate crimes. Therefore, as a measure of social change, that will need to be addressed since attitudes and beliefs largely affect legislation. References Cabeldue, M. K., Cramer, R. J., Kehn, A., Crosby, J. W., & Anastasi, J. S. (2018). Measuring attitudes about hate: Development of the Hate Crime Beliefs Scale. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, 33(23), 3656–3685. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260516636391 Dunbar, E., Quinones, J., & Crevecoeur, D. A. (2005). Assessment of hate crime offenders: The role of bias intent in examining violence risk. Journal of Forensic Psychology Practice, 5(1), 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1300/J158v05n01_01 Plumm, K. M., Terrance, C. A., & Austin, A. (2014). Not all hate crimes are created equal: An examination of the roles of ambiguity and expectations in perceptions of hate crimes: Research and reviews. Current Psychology, 33(3), 321-364. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s12144-014-9215-8 U.S. Department of Justice. (2015). The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009. https://www.justice.gov/crt/matthew-shepard-and-james-byrd-jr-hate-crimes-prevention-act-2009-0 Darya Baugh-Ruschman             According to Plumm, Terrance, and Austin (2014), the U.S. Department of Justice defines a hate crime as “the violence of intolerance and bigotry, intended to hurt and intimidate someone because of their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, or disability” (p. 321). While many people’s perceptions of hate crime physical violence or assault against a member of a minority group, resulting from anger or hatred, vandalism is also a type of hate crime (Plumm et al., 2014). Additionally, the victim does not need to actually be part of a certain group; bias-motivated violence is considered hate crime if the offender perceives the victim to be a member of the targeted group (Plumm et al., 2014). Hate crimes are meant to send a message and cause psychological harm as much as physical harm (Mills, Freilich, & Chermak, 2015). Impacts of hate crimes on victims include emotional and cognitive problems (e.g., depression; Plumm et al., 2014). Hate crimes also cause behavioral problems (e.g., suicidal ideation) and interpersonal problems (Plumm et al., 2014), in addition to feelings of lessened security because one feels that their community will be targeted (Boeckmann & Turpin-Petrosino, 2002).             Hate crime laws are meant to reduce the occurrence of hate crimes, empower victims to report hate crimes, improve victims’ interactions with law enforcement, and improve victims’ social status because of the prevention and punishment of hate crimes (Valcore & Dodge, 2019). However, whether hate crime laws have truly decreased the number of hate crimes is not clear, because hate crimes are underreported (Pezzella, Fetzer, & Kleler, 2019). For example, a victim of a hate crime may not report the crime because they are afraid of retaliation, or because they do not have confidence in law enforcement and do not believe the police will take their victimization seriously (Pezzella et al., 2019). Victims may also be afraid that their victimization will be made public (Boeckmann & Turpin-Petrosino, 2002). Therefore, hate crime laws may not have much impact on occurrence. Additionally, there may not be much positive impact for victims, particularly if they do not report the crimes.             Hate crimes have a negative impact on both individuals who have been victimized and their communities, so hate crime legislation should, theoretically, create positive social change. However, hate crime laws may not always be beneficial to targeted groups and are considered mostly symbolic (Valcore & Dodge, 2019), and hate crimes are underreported for various reasons (Boeckmann & Turpin-Petrosino, 2002; Pezzella et al., 2019). When the laws are considered symbolic, and victims do not report hate crimes, positive social change is not easy to achieve. Hate crime laws send a positive message to minority groups and indicate the government’s stance against bigotry, however, some research has shown that they fail to prevent or deter violence (Valcore & Dodge, 2019).             The Hate Crime Sentencing Enhancement Act of 1994 increases penalties for hate crimes, which the law defines as “a crime committed against a person because of real or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation” (Cogan, 2002, p. 175). Therefore, a bias-motivated crime would have a higher penalty than a crime that was not bias-motivated, the justification being that bias-motivated crimes cause greater social harm than other crimes (Dharmapala & Garoupa, 2002). For example, when an individual perceived to be part of a certain minority group is assaulted and it is proven to a jury that the assault was bias-motivated, the offender may receive a longer sentence than if the assault was not bias-motivated. References Boeckmann, R. J., & Turpin-Petrosino, C. (2002). Understanding the harm of hate crime. Journal of Social Issues, 58(2), 207-225. https://doi.org/10.1111/1540-4560.00257. Cogan, J. C. (2002). Hate crime as a crime category worthy of policy attention. American Behavioral Scientist, 46(1), 173-185. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764202046001011. Dharmapala, D., & Garoupa, N. (2002). Penalty enhancement for hate crimes: An economic analysis. American Law & Economics Review, 6(1), 185–207. https://doi.org/10.1093/aler/ahh001. Mills, C. E., Freilich, J. D., & Chermak, S. M. (2015). Extreme hatred: Revisiting the hate crime and terrorism relationship to determine whether they are “close cousins” or “distant relatives.” Crime & Delinquency, 61(6), 1–33. doi: 10.1177/0011128715620626. Pezzella, F. S., Fetzer, M. D., & Keller, T. (2019). The dark figure of hate crime underreporting. American Behavioral Scientist, 1-24. https://doi.org/10.1177/0002764218823844. Plumm, K. M., Terrance, C. A., & Austin, A. (2014). Not all hate crimes are created equal: An examination of the roles of ambiguity and expectations in perceptions of hate crimes. Current Psychology, 33(3), 321–364. Valcore, J. L., & Dodge, M. (2019). How hate crime legislation shapes gay and lesbian target groups: An analysis of social construction, law, and policy. Criminal Justice Policy Review, 30(2), 293–315. https://doi.org/10.1177/0887403416651924.