scholarly journals Reconceptualizing Anti-LGBT Hate Crimes as Burdening Expression and Association: A Case for Expanding Federal Hate Crime Legislation to Include Gender Identity and Sexual Orientation

2007 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 81 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Blair Woods
2019 ◽  
pp. 147737081988751
Author(s):  
Alexander Kondakov

This article presents the results of a study of the victimization of queer people in Russia before and after the ‘gay-propaganda’ bill was signed into law in 2013. Despite the development of hate crime legislation, few violent incidents against LGBTIQ (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex, and questioning) individuals are recorded in the Russian legal system. An original method of court rulings analysis is put forward in order to move towards an actual number of criminal offences against these groups. All court decisions that mention non-heterosexual victims are reviewed to identify whether these cases could have been considered hate crimes. As a result, 267 first-instance criminal court rulings dealing with 297 LGBTIQ victims are identified in 2011–16. Descriptive statistical analysis demonstrates that the number of victims grew substantially after 2013.


Criminology ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colleen E. Mills ◽  
Joshua Freilich ◽  
Steven Chermak

This article focuses on political crimes, specifically terrorism and hate crime. Both terrorism and hate crime are criminal activities that are often committed to further a political objective, as opposed to typical or regular crimes that are usually committed for personal reasons such as greed, revenge, or other personal motivations. Political motivations encompass ideological, social, and religious objectives. Several works (e.g., Bruce Hoffman’s Inside Terrorism; see Hoffman 2006, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime) examine the evolution of terrorism from ancient to modern times. While bias-motivated violence and hate crimes are just as old as terrorism, the United States did not formally adopt hate crime legislation, through the passage of a variety of substantive penalty enhancement and data collection laws, until the late 20th century. Making Hate a Crime (Jenness and Grattet 2004, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime) explores the history of hate crime legislation, highlighting how various civil rights and victims’ rights movements played a role in the passage of hate crime legislation. In the classic text Hate Crimes Revisited, Jack Levin and Jack McDevitt outline the history of hate crimes, explain why some persons are motivated to commit these crimes, and discuss efforts to combat them (Levin and McDevitt 2002, cited under Defining Terrorism and Hate Crime).


Author(s):  
Amy L. Brandzel

This chapter examines the violent maintenance of citizenship through the police state, and the uses of hate crime legislation to both name and disallow any recognition of this violence. The intervention into how we understand citizenship to be violently organized functions at two interconnected levels, that is, at the structural level of state violence, and at the social level of identity categories. At the level of the state, hate crime legislation offers us important information on how the violence of citizenship is managed, controlled, and directed. At the structural level of the state, the chapter adds to left critiques of hate crime legislation by unpacking how these laws are used to create a dangerous discontinuum, in which hate crimes are marked as individualized errors, while police brutality is systemically assuaged. By examining the machinations of hate crime legislation at these two levels, it is argued that hate crime legislation works, simultaneously, to recognize and deny: (1) the violence of citizenship; and (2) the fear that the oppressed will seek revenge and retaliate for this experience by using violence themselves.


2020 ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andras L. Pap

Abstract Using Hungary as a case study and focusing on legislative policies and the practical application of hate crime legislation, this article shows the various ways legal policy can become misguided in the labyrinth of identity politics, minority protection, and penal populism. The first mistake states can make, the author argues, is not to adopt hate crime legislation. The second error arguably pertains to conceptualizing hate crimes as an identity protection but not a minority-protection mechanism and instrument. The third fallacy the author identifies concerns legislative and practical policies that conceptualize victims based on self-identification and not on the perpetrator’s (or the wider community’s) potential perception and classification. The fourth flaw concerns the abuse of the concept of hate crime when it is applied in interethnic conflicts wherein members of minority communities are perpetrators and the victims are members of the majority communities. The fifth is institutional discrimination through the systematic underpolicing of hate crimes.


Author(s):  
Duncan Breen ◽  
Juan A A Nel

The South African government is currently developing legislation on hate crimes. This follows repeated calls by civil society for an appropriate response to the apparent scourge of hate and bias-motivated crimes that tarnish the image of South Africa as a ‘rainbow nation’. This article is aimed at informing related policy debates and provides discussion of violence targeted at foreign nationals and at those who are (or perceived to be) sexual minorities and/or gender non-conforming. This will give an indication of the trends and challenges that the proposed legislation and policy frameworks will need to address.


2016 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 293-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jace L. Valcore ◽  
Mary Dodge

Supporters of hate crime legislation argue the laws are a positive development designed to promote social equality and encourage political participation. Critics claim the laws are patronizing and disempowering. Existing research addresses neither the impact of hate crime laws on designated social groups nor attempts to verify assumptions about legislation and the social and political status of protected minorities. Sexual orientation, one of the most controversial categories, resulted in considerable social and political debate. This research explores the addition of sexual orientation to state hate crime law and how inclusion of this target group affects the social construction of gays and lesbians. Data are drawn from a sample of 12 daily newspapers in six states. Content and time-series analyses were used to explore social construction. The results indicate that inclusion in hate crime protections fails to have a positive impact on the construction of the group, and the discussion offers important policy implications.


Author(s):  
Mohamad Al-Hakim ◽  
Susan Dimock

Our principal concern in this paper is with the accusation that hate crime legislation violates the principle of proportionality and related principles of just sentencing, such as parity, fair notice, and representative labelling. We argue that most attempts to reconcile enhanced punishment for hate crimes with the principle of proportionality fail. More specifically, it seems that any argument that tries to justify hate crime legislation on the grounds that such crimes are more serious because their consequential harms are worse or their perpetrators are more culpable than their nonhateful counterparts will fail, and thus enhanced punishment will violate the principle of proportionality. Given the seeming irreconcilable tension between proportionality and hate crime legislation, we turn to consideration of hybrid theories of punishment that permit deviations from strict proportionality when needed to serve other important and legitimate purposes of sentencing. We argue that even if such hybrid theories can justify the enhanced punishments for hate crimes, existing theories cannot provide any principled limit on the extent from which proportionality can be deviated. We suggest such a limit and provide a principled justification for it.


2020 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 266-277
Author(s):  
Lorena Sosa

In 2012, after decades of trans and travesti activism in Argentina, the law on gender identity was finally adopted. Travesti activists Diana Sacayán and Lohana Berkins were at the forefront of these efforts. The same year, after the long struggle of the feminist movement, ‘femicide,’ understood as the murder of women by men in the context of gender-based violence, was incorporated into the Criminal Code as aggravated murder. This legal amendment also criminalized hate crime based on the sexual orientation or gender identity of the victim. Mobilized by Sacayán’s murder in 2015, the trans and travesti collective sought to make the experiences of exclusion and marginalization of the travesti collective visible by coining the notion of ‘travesticide,’ and demanded it to be used in the ensuing criminal trial that followed her death. Constrained by the legal notions of femicide, gender-based violence, and hate crimes, the Tribunal introduced ‘travesticide’ in their decision, yet questions on how to properly operationalize this notion in criminal law remain. Each notion offers opportunities and poses difficulties in making the murder of travestis politically visible and accounted for. By a detailed analysis of the final judgment, this article reflects on the implications of the notions used in the trial and the possible lessons for future interactions with the criminal justice system.


2018 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 75-90
Author(s):  
Jen Neller

The implications of specifying certain identity categories have been widely debated in the context of hate crime laws and policies. However, they have been less thoroughly examined in the particular contexts of hate speech. Although the majority of laws regulating speech do not differentiate between identity categories, the ‘stirring up’ offences of the United Kingdom Public Order Act 1986 are stratified along grounds of race, religion and sexual orientation. This article argues that, while the concerns raised about identity categories in relation to hate crime legislation are equally relevant to the stirring up provisions, the proposed solutions cannot automatically be transposed to hate speech offences. Accordingly, this article explores challenges that are encountered in attempts to make hate crime and hate speech legislation more inclusive before advancing some tentative suggestions for how hate speech laws might move beyond identity silos.


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