This guide begins by describing the problem of hate crimes and reviewing factors that increase its risks. It then identifies a series of questions to help you analyze your local hate crimes problem. It reviews responses to the problem and what is known about these from evaluative research and police practice. Specifically, it describes what you can do to reduce underlying tension in the community that contributes to hate crimes. This guide also outlines what the police can do to address any special fear and trauma experienced by the individual victim and the racial, ethnic, religious, or sexual orientation community to which the victim belongs. Finally, it reviews the police role in monitoring hate groups that have members and conduct activities in your community.
By Michael Jensen, Elizabeth Yates and Sheehan Kane.
The Proud Boys were formed by Gavin McInnes, co-founder of Vice Media, in 2016 during the U.S. presidential election. Proud Boys consider themselves “Western chauvinists” who romanticize a traditional, male-dominated version of Western culture. While the Proud Boys vehemently deny adhering to a racist ideology, the organization is deeply rooted in white nationalism and misogyny. As of December 31, 2021, 83 Proud Boys members and sympathizers have allegedly carried out ideologically motivated crimes in the United States. This number includes 54 Proud Boys defendants who participated in the Capitol breach on January 6, 2021. Proud Boys defendants have come from 25 states and the District of Columbia, including 14 from Florida, 14 from New York, 7 from Washington, and 6 from Pennsylvania. Using auxiliary data from the Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) project, these infographics provide information on the characteristics of U.S. Proud Boys defendants and their crimes.
College Park, MD: START, 2022. 3p.
Edited by Ruth Peterson, Lauren Krivo and John Hagan
In this authoritative volume, race and ethnicity are themselves considered as central organizing principles in why, how, where and by whom crimes are committed and enforced. The contributors argue that dimensions of race and ethnicity condition the very laws that make certain behaviors criminal, the perception of crime and those who are criminalized, the determination of who becomes a victim of crime under which circumstances, the responses to laws and crime that make some more likely to be defined as criminal, and the ways that individuals and communities are positioned and empowered to respond to crime.
New York: New York University Press, 2006. 432p.
By Joyce King
On June 7, 1998, James Byrd, Jr., a forty-nine-year-old black man, was dragged to his death while chained to the back of a pickup truck driven by three young white men. It happened just outside of Jasper, a sleepy East Texas logging town that, within twenty-four hours of the discovery of the murder, would be inextricably linked in the nation’s imagination to an exceptionally brutal, modern-day lynching.
In this superbly written examination of the murder and its aftermath, award-winning journalist Joyce King brings us on a journey that begins at the crime scene and extends into the minds of the young men who so casually ended a man’s life. She takes us inside the prison in which two of them met for the first time, and she shows how it played a major role in shaping their attitudes—racial and otherwise. The result is a deeply engrossing psychological portrait of the accused and a powerful indictment of the American prison system’s ability to reform criminals. Finally, King writes with candor and clarity about how the events of that fateful night have affected her—as a black woman, a native Texan, and a journalist given the agonizing assignment of covering the trials of all three defendants.
New York: Pantheon Books, 2002. 248p.
By Colleen E. Mills
Hate crime proves prevalent in American society, inflicting a variety of harms on victims as well as society at large. Scholars have long sought to understand the motivations and conditions behind hate crime offending. Green and his colleagues conducted the classic neighborhood studies examining the conditions that foster hate crime (Green, Glaser, & Rich, 1998; Green, Strolovich, & Wong, 1998; Green, Strolovitch, Wong, & Bailey). Using data from the New York Police Department’s Hate Crimes Task Force, the current study replicates and extends Green's neighborhood studies by investigating hate crime in New York City from 1995 to 2010. This study investigates whether Green, Strolovitch, & Wong’s (1998) findings hold true over an extended period of time in New York City, during which the city underwent major demographic changes. Using a group conflict framework (Blalock, 1967; Tolnay & Beck, 1995), the current study extends prior work by investigating the impact of various "threats, including defended neighborhoods as well as economic, political, terrorist, and gay threat, on different types of anti-minority hate crime, including those against racial, ethnic, and religious minorities as well as anti-gay hate crime. The current study also integrates criminological frameworks, testing social disorganization and strain to explain hate crime. Using negative binomial regression analyses with a pooled cross-sectional design, the current study provides a thorough analysis of hate crime in New York City as well as further insight into hate crime in the context of defended neighborhoods.
New York: City University of New York, 2007. 211p.
By Paul Iganski
The impression often conveyed by the media about hate crime offenders is that they are hate-fuelled individuals who, in acting out their extremely bigoted views, target their victims in premeditated violent attacks. Scholarly research on the perpetrators of hate crime has begun to provide a more nuanced picture. But the preoccupation of researchers with convicted offenders neglects the vast majority of hate crime offenders that do not come into contact with the criminal justice system.This book, from a leading author in the field, widens understanding of hate crime by demonstrating that many offenders are ordinary people who offend in the context of their everyday lives. Written in a lively and accessible style, the book takes a victim-centred approach to explore and analyse hate crime as a social problem, providing an empirically informed and scholarly perspective. Aimed at academics and students of criminology, sociology and socio-legal studies, the book draws out the connections between the individual agency of offenders and the background structural context for their actions. It adds a new dimension to the debate about criminalising hate in light of concerns about the rise of punitive and expressive justice, scrutinizing the balance struck by hate crime laws between the rights of offenders and the rights of victims.
Bristol, UK: Policy Press, 2008. 168p.
By James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter
In the early 1980s, a new category of crime appeared in the criminal law lexicon. In response to concerted advocacy-group lobbying, Congress and many state legislatures passed a wave of "hate crime" laws requiring the collection of statistics on, and enhancing the punishment for, crimes motivated by certain prejudices. This book places the evolution of the hate crime concept in socio-legal perspective. James B. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter adopt a skeptical if not critical stance, maintaining that legal definitions of hate crime are riddled with ambiguity and subjectivity. The book contends that hate crime as a socio-legal category represents the elaboration of an identity politics now manifesting itself in many areas of the law. But the attempt to apply the anti-discrimination paradigm to criminal law generates problems and anomalies. For one thing, members of minority groups are frequently hate crime perpetrators. Moreover, the underlying conduct prohibited by hate crime law is already subject to criminal punishment. Jacobs and Potter question whether hate crimes are worse or more serious than similar crimes attributable to other anti-social motivations. Advancing a provocative argument in clear and persuasive terms, Jacobs and Potter show how the recriminalization of hate crime has little (if any) value with respect to law enforcement or criminal justice. Indeed, enforcement of such laws may exacerbate intergroup tensions rather than eradicate prejudice.
Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 1998. 224p.
By Barbara Perry
In The Name of Hate is the first book to offer a comprehensive theory of hate crimes, arguing for an expansion of the legal definitions that most states in the U.S. hold. Barbara Perry provides an historical understanding of hate crimes and provocatively argues that hate crimes are not an aberration of current society, but rather a by-product of a society still grappling with inequality, difference, fear, and hate.
New York: Routledge, 2001. 289p.
By Cristina Eguizábal, Matthew C. Ingram, Karise M. Curtis, Aaron Korthuis, Eric L. Olson and Nicholas Phillips
Throughout the spring and summer of 2014, a wave of unaccompanied minors and families from Central America began arriving at the U.S.-Mexican border in record numbers. During June and July over 10,000 a month were arriving. The unexpected influx triggered a national debate about immigration and border policy, as well as an examination of the factors compelling thousands of children to undertake such a treacherous journey. Approximately two-thirds of these children are from Central America’s Northern Triangle—El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras. According to interviews with the children their motives for migrating ranged from fleeing some of the world’s highest homicide rates, rampant extortion, communities controlled by youth gangs, domestic violence, impunity for most crimes, as well as economic despair and lack of opportunity. Many hoped to reunite with family members, especially parents, who are already in the United States. The wave of migrants has underscored chronic problems in the region that stem back decades. It is often assumed that international drug trafficking explains the surge in violence since 2009, but other important factors are also at play. Drug trafficking is certainly a factor, especially in areas where criminal control of territory and trafficking routes is contested, but drugs do not explain the entirety of the complex phenomenon. Other factors have also contributed. While there are important differences among the three countries, there are also common factors behind the violence. Strong gang presence in communities often results in competition for territorial and economic control through extortion, kidnapping and the retail sale of illegal drugs. Threats of violence and sexual assault are often tools of neighborhood control, and gang rivalries and revenge killings are commonplace. Elevated rates of domestic abuse, sexual violence, and weak family and household structures also contribute as children are forced to fend for themselves and often chose (or are coerced into) the relative “safety” of the gang or criminal group. Likewise, important external factors such a weak capacity among law enforcement institutions, elevated levels of corruption, and penetration of the state by criminal groups means impunity for crime is extraordinarily high (95 percent or more), and disincentives to criminal activity are almost non-existent. Public confidence in law enforcement is low and crime often goes unreported.
Washington DC: Wilson Center, Latin America Program, 2015. 296p.
By The Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA)
In this report, EIA documents for the first time the systematic export and import of illegal wood from Peru to the United States. In many ways, this report not a new story: the system’s corruption is something of which everyone in the sector is aware. EIA’s contribution lies in having identified and patiently put together the pieces of the puzzle to reveal the mechanism that allows this trade to happen: what Peruvians call the “laundering machine”.
EIA’s investigative work focused on reconstructing the routes that timber takes from the Amazon to the warehouses of US importers, through use of official information obtained under Peru’s Transparency and Access to Public Information Law. The links in this chain are willfully obscured to perpetuate confusion about the origins of almost all timber traded in Peru. EIA was able to reconstruct the chain of custody for trade in cedar (Cedrela odorata) and bigleaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) only because both species are protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Flora and Fauna (CITES) and thus require specific export permit documents. The same illegal modus operandi is being applied for other species, but the even more limited information available regarding non-CITES species trade makes it virtually impossible to connect the concession of origin with the shipments being exported.
Washington, DC; London:: EIA, 2012. 72p.
By Tamsin Bradley
Growing awareness of femicide has not universally translated into effective policy and programming. Though legislation relating to gender-based violence and/or femicide exists in many countries, both persist. A combined social, cultural, political and economic approach situates femicide prevention and responses at various levels, including changes in individual behaviour. Using the term ‘femicide’ more frequently at international forums is crucial not only to focus attention on the gendered nature of violence but also to act as a call for action. Situational studies reveal that political will to end femicide differs from country to country. Femicide together with the patriarchal norms and misogyny that precipitate it are not just extra-EU problems. Rather, they are of global concern, demanding a global response; in non-EU countries this response is often dependent on donor funding. We now know more than ever what works to reverse patterns of violence. These patterns can be broken by developing the capacity of women’s organisations and strengthening global feminist movements that work with national and local activist networks. Additionally, engaging men and boys in this process of transformation is vital if we are to address violence against women and girls and ultimately end femicide.
Brussels: European Parliament, 2021. 22p.
By Jack A. Blum; Michael Levi; R. T. Naylor; and Phil Williams
While there has been a general trend towards enacting money-laundering laws that provide for the lifting of financial secrecy in appropriate cases, such secrecy remains a barrier in many jurisdictions, including some of those that have come to be known as 'financial havens'. The advances in technology and communication have made the three F's - finding, freezing and forfeiting of criminally derived income and assets all the more difficult. This publication discusses these issues and other related problems in depth. The law enforcement success stories presented convey a sense of imaginative ways in which financial havens are used. The cases also highlight the advantages, from the point of view of criminals, of collusion with bank employees and the use of professional launderers.
Vienna: United Nations Office for Drug Control and Crime Prevention, 1998, 117p.
By Arthur Conan Doyle .
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle came to the fore to publicize the dreadful massacres and genocidal crimes of Belgium’s King Leopold, who, fraudulently bought up all the land that he could then call it his Congo. He actually “owned” his own country. He then proceeded to exploit the indigenous peoples of the Congo to rob the Congo of its “riches.” He treated all the Congolese peoples as his personal slaves and used them to produce sugar, rubber and whatever else he could export and build his own riches and the lavish mansion in France and Belgium. An influential writer like Conan Doyle was needed to expose Leopold for the evil tyrant that he was, because, incredibly, Leopold achieved all his horrible gains under the guise of “humanity” and “charity” in helping the Congo people to become civilized.
NY. Doubleday. (1909) 156 pages.
Edited by Barbara Harriss-White and Lucia Michelutti.
Criminal Political Economies in South Asia. The Wild East bridges political economy and anthropology to examine a variety of il/legal economic sectors and businesses such as red sanders, coal, fire, oil, sand, air spectrum, land, water, real estate, procurement and industrial labour. The 11 case studies, based across India, Pakistan and Bangladesh, explore how state regulative law is often ignored and/or selectively manipulated. The emerging collective narrative shows the workings of regulated criminal economic systems where criminal formations, politicians, police, judges and bureaucrats are deeply intertwined.
London. UCL Press. 2019.