The Psychology of Hate and Hate Crimes
*In the United States today, we can see a huge cultural diversity. People come from all over the world in search of a better way of life and move to be in the land of the free. However, with such a huge cultural variety in America this leads to individuals having radical opinions of other races, religions, genders, and sexual orientations. How does an individual create this way of thinking? Are people born with prejudice? These are some of the questions that people have had for years. With that being said, the issues that must be addressed in order to understand the psychology of hate in relation and the possible ways of reducing hate crimes include: offender motivations, prejudice, bigotry, and the reasons …show more content…
To include, McDevitt, Levin, and Bennett (2002) also stated, “These were the cases in which the offenders, almost always young and in small groups, were just board and looking for some fun” (p 97). For many young people this is something that is common not only in the United States, but in the United Kingdom as well. Teenagers just want something that is going to be exciting and adventurous. On the other hand, a lot of these kids don’t have an agenda to hurt anyone, it is usually the leader of the group that has some sort of extremism and the children get caught up in the crime. So what is a hate crime? A hate crime is defined as a crime motivated by racial, sexual or other prejudice. Next, is reactive crimes, also known as defensive crimes. This is the second type of hate crimes that is identified by Levin and McDevitt (1993). Levin and McDevitt (2002) found that: “These are crimes in which the perpetrator is reacting to what he considers to be an intrusion that is, some incident triggers and expression of anger. The trigger incident need not be objectively significant. For example, a black person might simply enter an all-white neighborhood, as happened in 1986 in Howard beach, New York, and in 1989 in …show more content…
In summary, three African Americans broke down in Howard Beach and they were searching for a way home to Brooklyn. That was when some white men that lived in the community started yelling at them trying to get them out of their neighborhood. It then escalated and a man by the name of Jon Lester, gathered up a group of friends to go after the three young African American men. However, it all ended violently because one of the African Americans was hit by a car and killed, the other one was brutally beaten, and the third man ran away. The last type of offender motivated crime is called mission crimes. A mission crime is when individual has a motive to get rid of a particular type of individual that he thinks is inferior to him/her. Mission crimes are usually made by a person that is acting alone. As we have discussed in
*In the United States today, we can see a huge cultural diversity. People come from all over the world in search of a better way of life and move to be in the land of the free. However, with such a huge cultural variety in America this leads to individuals having radical opinions of other races, religions, genders, and sexual orientations. How does an individual create this way of thinking? Are people born with prejudice? These are some of the questions that people have had for years. With that being said, the issues that must be addressed in order to understand the psychology of hate in relation and the possible ways of reducing hate crimes include: offender motivations, prejudice, bigotry, and the reasons …show more content…
To include, McDevitt, Levin, and Bennett (2002) also stated, “These were the cases in which the offenders, almost always young and in small groups, were just board and looking for some fun” (p 97). For many young people this is something that is common not only in the United States, but in the United Kingdom as well. Teenagers just want something that is going to be exciting and adventurous. On the other hand, a lot of these kids don’t have an agenda to hurt anyone, it is usually the leader of the group that has some sort of extremism and the children get caught up in the crime. So what is a hate crime? A hate crime is defined as a crime motivated by racial, sexual or other prejudice. Next, is reactive crimes, also known as defensive crimes. This is the second type of hate crimes that is identified by Levin and McDevitt (1993). Levin and McDevitt (2002) found that: “These are crimes in which the perpetrator is reacting to what he considers to be an intrusion that is, some incident triggers and expression of anger. The trigger incident need not be objectively significant. For example, a black person might simply enter an all-white neighborhood, as happened in 1986 in Howard beach, New York, and in 1989 in …show more content…
In summary, three African Americans broke down in Howard Beach and they were searching for a way home to Brooklyn. That was when some white men that lived in the community started yelling at them trying to get them out of their neighborhood. It then escalated and a man by the name of Jon Lester, gathered up a group of friends to go after the three young African American men. However, it all ended violently because one of the African Americans was hit by a car and killed, the other one was brutally beaten, and the third man ran away. The last type of offender motivated crime is called mission crimes. A mission crime is when individual has a motive to get rid of a particular type of individual that he thinks is inferior to him/her. Mission crimes are usually made by a person that is acting alone. As we have discussed in