A Look at Hate Crime Theories Essay

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hate crime theories and address how the theories can account for aspects pertaining to hate crimes.

Why Do People Do Hate Crime

A majority of sociological hate crime accounts are aimed at one out of two points: "socially disintegrated people's anomic outburst" or, alternately, "the solidaristic response of a group or community that feels, or is, threatened." As sociologists deal with social structure, hate crime accounts typically indicate transformations in societal structure's features, including economic slumps, sudden social transformation, societal disorganization, or some form of social threats that, in general, result in violence, and, in particular, bring about bias-driven violence (Social Context Macro Level Theories ). For understanding the meaning of societal structure changes, and how social disorganization, particularly, can trigger an environment wherein individuals attack one another, one needs to examine certain works in sociology that endeavor to elucidate the conditions for individuals' engagement in hate crime or bias-based violence.

In actuarial as well as symbolic crimes, the selection of victims is often on the basis of a certain imagined or actual group membership and societal characteristic. A degree of discrimination founded on a societal attribute is observed in actuarial as well as symbolic crimes. However, notably, the motives for actuarial and symbolic crimes differ. In case of symbolic crimes, the basis of victim selection is a wish to convey a message, stemming from prejudice (Conceptualizing Hate Crime ). By contrast, offenses of an actuarial nature entail the employment of societal categories as the grounds for selecting victims, to serve a non-symbolic purpose.

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In bias motivation terms, a basic difference between parallel crime and hate crime is the "motive standard," which sets hate crime apart as being associated with a certain bias or prejudicial motive. In the symbolic crime context, a victim is chosen on account of what he/she symbolizes. This form of crime is perpetrated for significant reasons. On the other hand, in case of actuarial crimes, the basis for selection of victims is imagined or actual social attribute(s) for instrumental purposes. In the model of discriminatory selection, hate crime is solely defined based on the offender's discriminatory choice of victim, irrespective of the motive behind that choice. The emphasis of racial animus theory is the reason behind discriminatory victim selection (Conceptualizing Hate Crime ). With regard to status provisions, each of hate crime's conceptualizations invokes decisions regarding those who count and those who don't. Color, race, nationality and religion make up the key status cluster, and are identified as axes for occurrence of hate-driven offenses. The next status cluster is gender, disability status, and sexual orientation; these elements are increasingly being identified as axes for occurrence of hate-driven crimes.

Theories of Hate Crime

A majority of abstract hate crime accounts assume a compulsory psychological motive, as prominent hate crime definitions presume hostility of the offender towards the social group their victim belongs to. Individual psychological hate crime accounts concentrate on affective and cognitive processes by which perpetrators identify their victims, generate hostility, and become disposed to aggression and violence. Clearly, then, this approach explains….....

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