Sociology

3 pages APA style

The prevalence of hate crimes has increased. You have been asked to provide your insight into this and recommend ways to decrease the occurrence of these types of crimes.

Research the topic of hate crimes and address the following:

• Create a profile of the typical individual who commits hate crimes.
• Who are some targets or victims of hate crimes?
• What are some of the causes and effects of these crimes?
• What actions can be taken to minimize the occurrence of hate crimes?

This assignment requires that students research the phenomenon of hate crimes, with a focus on who commits them and how to address this social problem. I recommend that students open their papers with a legal definition of hate crimes. I also recommend that students seek out scholarly information on a profile of who tends to commit hate crimes, and the most successful papers include statistics on the prevalence and characteristics of hate crimes. The following resources offer solid, legitimate information about these issues, and are a good complement to your class materials:

http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/investigate/civilrights/hate_crimes

http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=tp&tid=37

http://www.splcenter.org/what-we-do/hate-and-extremism