Hate Crime Policies The Earliest And States example essay topic

... he citizens. The TPC areas, on the other hand, are more resistant to change. New ideas have a major obstacle because the TPC is a culture opposed to change. White supremacy has been a dominant factor in the south. White have typically dominated blacks.

Race is the key to understanding everything in the south. Furthermore, the south has featured a long-time support for the Democratic Party and a long-term suppression of blacks. As evidenced by many political researchers such as Ira Sharkansy, Lois Matthews, Thomas Abernathy, Frederick Wirt, and John Kink aid among others, Elazar's political cultures have been used to explain policy variations among states even today (11). Prior to researching hate crime policy, I took into consideration the previous research and its correlation to Elazar's political cultures. From this, I hypothesized that MPC regions of the United States would be most responsible for initiating anti-hate crime legislation and action and would, in general, be more likely to have hate crime policies than the IPC and TPC regions.

I felt that there would a much greater tendency to follow suit in regard to federal initiatives. My reasoning for this was simply the commonwealth idea that influences the politics and way of life in the MPC. The MPC is a liberal area with the people's interests at heart. The people are encouraged to participate and voice their concerns. It was the MPC that supported similar ideas during and after the Civil War.

The MPC was a staunch supporter of civil rights and rights for women in addition to our actions in the Cold War. I felt that the IPC would, similar to many other policy arenas, come in second in regard to hate crime policy. The IPC would not be as likely as the MPC to have existing policies or to be an initiator of such policy, but still to a much greater extent than the TPC. My reasoning for the agenda of this political culture, which many times has been considered a "gray area" is due to the use of the political system to further individual interests. This concept can be, at times, hard to apply because the IPC falls somewhere in the middle of the political cultures spectrum. The IPC has, however, featured a long history of heterogeneity.

This is a culture used to the existence of a variety of diverse groups; groups who may be very likely to take imitative on an issue such as hate crimes. Furthermore, the IPC has typically been a culture wherein politicians have learned the importance of gaining the support and votes of these many diverse groups in order to gain office. The TPC, contrarily, is established on a foundation devoted to maintaining the status quo. The TPC has historically been a very homogeneous region. White supremacy was, and still is in some respects, a way of life in the south.

The TPC is hardly concerned with allowing the masses involvement in politics; a privilege reserved for elites. The effort expended to gain blacks rights alone was horrendous and mostly ensured by federal enforcement. This lead me to believe that even today, the TPC would be least likely to readily accept change, namely hate crime policy. This is not to say that they will not have any such policy, but my hypothesis is that they will have been among the last to follow suit and least likely to have initiated action to protect people against hate crimes. Looking at statistics, compiled for 1999, alone can give quite an indication of the degree that states have prioritized hate crimes on their agendas. As previously mentioned, the first hate crime statute was enacted by California in 1978, so naturally hate crime policies are a product of the previous two decades.

According to spastics compiled by the FBI and Anti-Defamation League, it is evident that every state in the union, with the exception of Wyoming, has enacted some type of hate crime provision. Even Wyoming's, a combination MPC / IPC state, situation will be certain to change due to the recent events dealing with the Matthew Sheppard murder. These statistic provided for a variety of hate crime provisions including: bias-motivated violence and intimidation, civil action, criminal penalty, race religion and ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, institutional vandalism, data collection, and training for law enforcement personnel. California, Illinois, Louisiana, Minnesota, Rhode Island, and Washington were among states that accounted for all of these provisions.

According to Ira Sharkanksy, all of these are considered moralist states except for Illinois, which is a low-end individualist state, and Louisiana, a surprisingly traditionalist ic state. States with a minimal number (5 or fewer) of the above listed provisions included: Alabama, Arkansas, Arizona, Georgia, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, New Mexico, North Carolina, and Ohio. ON the other end of the spectrum, it is evident that most of these states have a long history of traditionalist ic tendencies. Arizona and Ohio sit in the IPC gray area while Montana, a moralist state, is the lone exception. The case of Montana is interesting but we have to understand that Montana has a very low population and consequently is also a very homogeneous state.

The lack of diversity and the issues pertaining to it, do not necessitate a demand for hate crime policy. Those states not listed feature between five and nine of the currently existent hate crime provisions. A vast majority of these states are either moralist or individualistic. Nebraska (TPC), South Carolina (TPC), and the District of Columbia have been the most recent states to add hate crime provisions (12 and 13). As previously mentioned, California, a moralist state, marked in 1978 the beginning of the modern campaign to criminalize hate-motivated behavior.

After a three-year pause, Washington, Oregon, and seven other states followed suit by adopting their first hate crime laws between 1981 and 1983. A hiatus in the criminalization process occurred between 1984 and 1986, but 1987 marked the beginning of a period of rapid adoption, as 18 states adopted hate crimes laws. "Regarding content, the legal strategies employed most often to address hate-motivated violence were 'ethnic intimidation / malicious harassment-freestanding' laws and 'penalty enhancement laws'". The former was first passed in both Washington and Oregon, both highly moralist states, in 1981, and the most recent ones were passed in Iowa and South Dakota in 1992 and 1993, respectively. Every region in the continental United States has at least one state with an "ethnic intimidation / malicious harassment- freestanding" law and a total of 13 states have enacted this type of law (3). According to Ryken Grattet, Valerie Jenness, and Theodore Curry claim that the importance states give to different types of hate crime policies reflect the history of various post-1960's civil rights movements in the United States.

Race, religion, color, and national origin reflect the early legal contest over minorities's status and rights, "thus, there is a more developed history of invoking and then deploying the law to protect and enhance the status of blacks, Jews, and immigrants". This is a very moralist perspective, hence mirroring the very sentiments that invoked change in those areas. The women's movement, gay / lesbian movement, and disability movement reflect a "second wave" of civil right's activism and "identity politics" and sexual orientation, gender, and disability have only recently been recognized by law, these statuses remain less embedded in hate crime law. They are also more heavily contested protected statuses. Once again, these statuses are most likely to be protected in MPC states followed by IPC then TPC. Eight states have even taken a comprehensive approach in which all crimes can be upgraded to the status of hate crimes.

Vermont, another highly moralist state, passed such a law in 1989. Ryken, Jenness, and Curry also attribute the form and timing of adoption of state-level hate crime legislation to interstate institutionalization processes. They write that our even history analysis shows that the pressure to adopt a hate crime law builds as more and more states within the system enact laws. Internal characteristics, however, are also relevant to the spread of hate crime laws, as states with more innovative policy cultures pass laws earlier than do those with less innovative policy cultures. "Shaped by local conditions and broad system effects, the correlates of criminalization resemble those in many other diffusion contexts". (3) This almost exactly mirrors the application of Elazar to explain policy differences among states.

Donald Haider-Markel writes that the media has been particularly important in triggering such action (i.e. Matthew Sheppard and Benjamin Smith), but the approaches the states have taken to deal with hate crimes has been highly indicative of their political culture. The media simply helps to make issues more salient and when salience is high, it is more likely that issues will gain priority on the political agenda. Implementation of social regulatory policy often depends on the voluntary compliance of state and local officials. Federal hate crime policy clearly fits this description. Given the voluntary nature of implementing federal social regulatory policy, therefore, local political conditions should largely determine implementation effort. Furthermore, Haider-Markel claims that social-regulatory policy is thought to arise out of factors in the political environment including the strength of the interest groups, party competition, issue salience, and bureaucratic strength (4).

According to Elazar, the MPC favors a strong bureaucracy and is concerned with the issues that will especially affect the people. Haider-Markel claims that because hate crime policies are considered social regulatory policy, they seek to change behavior that is linked to a "normative debate concerning the morality of the individual actions and the subsequent consequences of those actions on the rest of society. Hate crimes are seen as damaging the "community" as well as the individual. "Social regulatory policies may largely arise out of political demands of citizens and interest groups, the motivations of politicians, and bureaucratic structure and behavior".

Again, this describes the political foundations of the MPC exactly. On the other hand we have the TPC which views bureaucracy negatively and rarely focuses on issues. These claims further fortify the correlation between Elazar's political cultures and hate crime policy in the United States. Implementation of hate crime policy was seen much earlier and to a greater extent in moralist regions as opposed to later and less-inclusive implementation efforts that have evolved in traditional areas (4). In evaluating hate crime policies across all 50 states, it has become clearly evident that political culture makes a difference in what individual states choose to prioritize and how they go about taking action on such issues as bias-motivated behavior. In reviewing recent statistics, Daniel Elazar's work on political culture, in addition to several other authors who have undertaken analyses of hate crime policy in the United States, clear patterns have emerged that, with a few minor exceptions, fall into line with the MPC, IPC, and TPC tendencies as proposed by Elazar.

The long-standing political cultures have affected policy-making ever since our country was founded and continue to do so even today. To conclude, my hypotheses, which were based on the materials with which we have been presented through 0 out the course, were proven correct. State adopting hate crime policies the earliest and states most likely to have hate crime policies or to initiate them are considered moralist, followed by individual states who fall somewhere in between MPC and TPC, then traditional, who are least likely to place as much emphasis on adopting such policies.

Bibliography

1. "Fighting Hate Crimes Across the Nation". URL: web Jenness, Valerie and Ryken Grattet. "The Criminalization of Hate: A Comparison of Structural and Polity Influences on the Passage of 'Bias-Crime' Legislation in the United States". Sociological Perspectives. 1 November, 1996: 129-154.
3. Grattet, Ryken, Valerie Jenness, and Theodore R. Curry. "The Homogenization and Differentiation of Hate Crime Law in the United States, 1978 to 1995: Innovation and Diffusion in the Criminalization of Bigotry".
American Sociological Review. April, 1998: 286-307.
4. Haider-Markel, Donald P. "The Politics of Social Regulatory Policy: State and Federal Hate Crime Policy and Implementation Effort". Political Research Quarterly. March, 1998: 69-88.
5. "An Unwise Road in Texas". The Economist. 20 June, 1998: 17.
6. "The Hate Debate". The New Republic. 2 November, 1998: 7-8.
7. "1999 Hate Crime Laws: Anti-Defamation League".
URL: web "The White House Conference On Hate Crimes". URL: web Elazar article 10. U.S. Census Bureau Statistical Abstracts of the United States: 1998.
No. 344- Hate Crimes- Number of Incidents, Offenses, Victims, and Offenders by Bias Motivation: 1996".
Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1998.
21 September, 1998: 215.
11. Wirt Lecture 12. Sharkansky article. 13. "Map of State Statutes: 1999 Hate Crime Laws.