Debating Hate Crime

Debating Hate Crime examines the language used by parliamentarians, senators, and committee witnesses to debate Canada’s hate laws. Drawing on discourse analysis, semiotics, and critical psychoanalysis, Allyson Lunny explores how the tropes, metaphors, and other linguistic signifiers used in these debates expose the particular concerns, trepidations, and anxieties of Canadian lawmakers and the expert witnesses called before their committees. Lunny reveals the meaning and social signification of the endorsement of, and resistance to, hate law. The result is a rich historical account of some of Canada’s most passionate public debates on victimization, rightful citizenship, social threat, and moral erosion.

The hate debate is becoming increasingly urgent in both the US and the UK. This provocative collection helps frame that debate by asking all the right questions - and at the right time. Is justice served when someone committing an act of violence because of prejudice is punished more severely than someone who perpetrates the same assault for other reasons? That's the question posed by critics of 'hate crime' laws in the United States. It is also the central question addressed in The Hate Debate. Opponents say that hate crime laws infringe one's right to freedom of expression. They maintain that 'extra punishment' is not for the act itself, but for the bad VALUES and thoughts motivating the crime. On the other hand, supporters of hate crime laws argue that greater punishment is warranted because, in effect, hate crimes hurt more. The societal and other harms make hate crimes qualitatively different from crimes motivated on other grounds. What explains the emergence and extension of hate crime laws in the United States and in Britain? Do hate crime laws really create 'thought crimes'? Is extra punishment the best way to deal with hate? This collection of essays by leading commentators on both sides of the Atlantic seeks to clear a path through the current debate. Contributors: Elizabeth Burney, Senior Research Associate at Cambridge University's Institute of Criminology; Jeff Jacoby, award-winning columnist for the Boston Globe; Valerie Jenness, Chair of the Department of Criminology and associate professor, University of California, Irvine; Frederick M. Lawrence, Law Alumni Scholar and Professor of Law, Boston University Law School; Jack Levin, is the Brudnick Professor of Sociology and Criminology and Director of the Brudnick Center on Violence and Conflict, Northeastern University, Boston; Melanie Phillips, social commentator and columnist; Larry Ray, Professor of Sociology, University of Kent; David Smith, Professor of Social Work, Lancaster University; Peter Tatchell, journalist, author, broadcaster and campaigner on gay and other human rights.

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.

The Fourth Edition of Hate Crimes: Causes, Controls, and Controversies by Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld takes a multidisciplinary approach that allows students to explore a broad scope of hate crimes. Drawing on recent developments, topics, and current research, this book examines the issues that foster hate crimes while demonstrating how these criminal acts impact individuals, as well as communities. Students are introduced to the issue through first-person vignettes—offering a more personalized account of both victims and perpetrators of hate crimes. Packed with the latest court cases, research, and statistics from a variety of scholarly sources, the Fourth Edition is one of the most comprehensive and accessible textbooks in the field.

KEY FEATURES • A brief introduction to the U.S. judicial system and to the public policy dimension of judicial decisions provides context for the material. • Criminal and regulatory laws are presented with contrasting views on various contemporary public policy issues, including assault weapons, hate crimes, stand your ground laws, police use of deadly force, and much more. • A question for debate and learning objectives appear at the beginning of each chapter. The debate format features contemporary topical issues that engage students and ask them to consider various points of view. • Brief essays introduce students to each debate and put the issue into context to help students understand how policy issues arise in criminal justice and law. • Summaries of the positions follow the debate sections to ensure students have a clear understanding of the contrasting arguments. • "You Decide" exercises and discussion questions appear at the end of each debate to give students the opportunity to apply what they read to new and novel situations.

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. No matter how hate crime is defined, and despite an apparent media consensus to the contrary, the authors find no evidence to support the claim that the United States is experiencing a hate crime epidemic--instead, they cast doubt on whether the number of hate crimes is even increasing. The authors further assert that, while the federal effort to establish a reliable hate crime accounting system has failed, data collected for this purpose have led to widespread misinterpretation of the state of intergroup relations in this country. 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. They also argue that the effort to single out hate crime for greater punishment is, in effect, an effort to punish some offenders more seriously simply because of their beliefs, opinions, or values, thus implicating the First Amendment. 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.

Bias crimes are a scourge on our society. Is there a more terrifying image in the mind's eye than that of the burning cross? Punishing Hate examines the nature of bias-motivated violence and provides a foundation for understanding bias crimes and their treatment under the U.S. legal system. In this tightly argued book, Frederick Lawrence poses the question: Should bias crimes be punished more harshly than similar crimes that are not motivated by bias? He answers strongly in the affirmative, as do a great many scholars and citizens, but he is the first to provide a solid theoretical grounding for this intuitive agreement, and a detailed model for a bias crimes statute based on the theory. The book also acts as a strong corrective to recent claims that concern about hate crimes is overblown. A former prosecutor, Lawrence argues that the enhanced punishment of bias crimes, with a substantial federal law enforcement role, is not only permitted by doctrines of criminal and constitutional law but also mandated by our societal commitment to equality. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, from law and criminology, to sociology and social psychology, to today's news, Punishing Hate will have a lasting impact on the contentious debate over treatment of bias crimes in America.

The opportunities afforded by the Internet greatly overshadow the challenges. While not forgetting this, we can nevertheless still address some of the problems that arise. Hate speech online is one such problem. But what exactly is hate speech online, and how can we deal with it effectively? As with freedom of expression, on- or offline, UNESCO defends the position that the free flow of information should always be the norm. Counter-speech is generally preferable to suppression of speech. And any response that limits speech needs to be very carefully weighed to ensure that this remains wholly exceptional, and that legitimate robust debate is not curtailed.