On prejudice and punishment: The constitutional and policy dilemmas of hate crime laws

Since the early 1980\u27s, nearly every state has passed a law against crimes motivated by bias. These so-called hate crimes laws have engendered intense debate as to their constitutionality. However, little empirical research has been conducted as to how the laws operate, and what their potential effects may be. This dissertation begins with a legal analysis of the main constitutional issues about hate crimes. It is concluded that these questions are both unanswerable, because their resolutions depends largely on one\u27s individual viewpoint, and answered, because the Supreme Court has already issued a fairly definitive ruling. Instead, it is argued, attention should now focus on other policy issues. The following chapter presents data collected from law enforcement agencies and other sources on the number and character of hate crimes. These data suffer from a number of serious flaws, but a few trends are suggested. Among these are that African Americans are over-represented both as victims and as reported offenders of hate crimes. The remainder of the dissertation discusses the possibility that hate crime laws may actually hurt minorities. The social psychological research suggests that African Americans, in particular, may be more likely than whites to be accused and convicted of hate crimes. This hypothesis was tested via a mock-juror design involving a vignette in which the ethnicity of the victim and offender were varied. Contrary to the original hypothesis, it is concluded that, at least using this vignette, the offender\u27s and victim\u27s ethnicity did not usually affect the juror decisions. Participants also completed the Modern Racism Scale and a new scale, the Postmodern Racism Scale. Scores on these scales were strongly correlated. Overall, participants\u27 level of racism was not related to their decisions in the juror task. The implications of the results are discussed, and suggestions are made for future research in this area