Hate crimes-violence aimed at individuals because they are members of a particular group-were once considered the rare illegal actions of a small but vocal assortment of extremists who thrived on hating minorities. No more. In this new book by two of the country's leading experts on hate crimes, published ten years after their classic book of the same name, these most-recognized authorities and media commentators reinterpret this scourge of our generation-hatred based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, and even citizenship. In the aftermath of the worst act of terrorism in this country's history-the bombing of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001-the authors probe the causes and characteristics of such acts of hatred and, most vitally, their consequences for all of us.

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.

Hate Crimes: Typology, Motivations, and Victims offers a fresh perspective on the study of hate crimes. With separate chapters on LGBT, race, religion, and gender motivated hate crimes, the book focuses on the various targets of these crimes and examines the theories and motivations that drive perpetrators to commit these acts of hate. To address the increase in hate crimes occurring on campuses and in cyberspace, the book also includes chapters on campus hate crimes and virtual hate. Editors Robin Valeri and Kevin Borgeson and their contributors draw on theories from criminology, psychology, and sociology to explore the ideologies of hatemongers and extremist groups. No competing text offers such in-depth and nuanced coverage of hate and the contributing factors to one of the fastest growing social problems in America. The newly updated second edition opens each chapter with a relevant case study and includes a new chapter on hate crimes targeting people with disabilities. To keep up with the ever-changing digital landscape, the chapter on virtual hate has also added a discussion on the role of gaming, gaming adjacent platforms, and gamification in spreading hate. A core text for courses on hate crimes as well as an excellent supplement for any social problems class, Hate Crimes: Typology, Motivations, and Victims provides important insights into the growth and evolution of the field of hate crimes and hate studies. The chapter themes make this a highly readable text for criminal justice, psychology, or sociology professors and students as well as practitioners in the field.

The author examines the controversies surrounding cyber-harassment, arguing that it should be considered a matter for civil rights law and that social norms of decency and civility must be leveraged to stop it. --Publisher information.

Editor Laurie Willis has sensitively and intelligently tackled the issue of hate crimes within this collection of personal narratives. Readers won't be barraged with a ton of facts, but be presented factual situations as retold by people who were personally impacted by hate crime. This allows readers to form intelligent viewpoints with feeling and empathy. Narratives describe such situations as the recruitment of skinheads, and why bored middle-class white kids are the best target for recruitment. Another essay describes a mother who wants the world to see the savagery that was done to her son. Another essayist explains how he husband, an Indian American man, was shot and killed by an American because of his anger over the September 11th attacks. Facts can sometimes be easily ignored or over-written, but the narratives in this book cannot be ignored, and will educate your readers.

Why do we know every gory crime scene detail about such victims as Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. and yet almost nothing about the vast majority of other hate crime victims? Now that federal anti-hate-crimes laws have been passed, why has the number of these crimes not declined significantly? To answer such questions, Clara S. Lewis challenges us to reconsider our understanding of hate crimes. In doing so, she raises startling issues about the trajectory of civil and minority rights. Tough on Hate is the first book to examine the cultural politics of hate crimes both within and beyond the law. Drawing on a wide range of sources—including personal interviews, unarchived documents, television news broadcasts, legislative debates, and presidential speeches—the book calls attention to a disturbing irony: the sympathetic attention paid to certain shocking hate crime murders further legitimizes an already pervasive unwillingness to act on the urgent civil rights issues of our time. Worse still, it reveals the widespread acceptance of ideas about difference, tolerance, and crime that work against future progress on behalf of historically marginalized communities.