Debating Hate Crime examines the language and argumentation used by parliamentarians, senators, and committee witnesses to debate Canada’s “hate-crime” laws. These lively, and at times raucous, legislative debates and committee hearings reveal much about party politics, public policy, and social issues of the day, including citizenship, nationhood, and Canadian values. Drawing on discourse analysis, semiotics, and critical psychoanalysis, Allyson Lunny explores how the tropes, metaphors, and other linguistic signifiers used in these debates expose the particular concerns, trepidations, and anxieties of Canadian lawmakers and the expert witnesses called before their committees. In so doing, Lunny reveals and interrogates the meaning and social signification of the endorsement of, and resistance to, hate law. The result is a rich historical and analytical account of some of Canada’s most passionate public debates on victimization, rightful citizenship, social threat, and moral erosion.

The Fourth Edition of Hate Crimes: Causes, Controls, and Controversies by Phyllis B. Gerstenfeld takes a multidisciplinary approach that allows students to explore a broad scope of hate crimes. Drawing on recent developments, topics, and current research, this book examines the issues that foster hate crimes while demonstrating how these criminal acts impact individuals, as well as communities. Students are introduced to the issue through first-person vignettes—offering a more personalized account of both victims and perpetrators of hate crimes. Packed with the latest court cases, research, and statistics from a variety of scholarly sources, the Fourth Edition is one of the most comprehensive and accessible textbooks in the field.

Provides an overview of legislation, statistics on hate crimes, and biographies of individuals combating violent extremist activities.

Examines the issues associated with hate crimes committed in the United States including statistics, important legislation, and bibliographical resources.

In this book, the authors, all legal scholars from the tradition of critical race theory start from the experience of injury from racist hate speech and develop a theory of the first amendment that recognizes such injuries. In their critique of "first amendment orthodoxy", the authors argue that only a history of racism can explain why defamation, invasion of privacy and fraud are exempt from free-speech guarantees but racist verbal assault is not.

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.

The updated paperback edition of HATE dispels misunderstandings plaguing our perennial debates about "hate speech vs. free speech," showing that the First Amendment approach promotes free speech and democracy, equality, and societal harmony. As "hate speech" has no generally accepted definition, we hear many incorrect assumptions that it is either absolutely unprotected or absolutely protected from censorship. Rather, U.S. law allows government to punish hateful or discriminatory speech in specific contexts when it directly causes imminent serious harm. Yet, government may not punish such speech solely because its message is disfavored, disturbing, or vaguely feared to possibly contribute to some future harm. "Hate speech" censorship proponents stress the potential harms such speech might further: discrimination, violence, and psychic injuries. However, there has been little analysis of whether censorship effectively counters the feared injuries. Citing evidence from many countries, this book shows that "hate speech" are at best ineffective and at worst counterproductive. Therefore, prominent social justice advocates worldwide maintain that the best way to resist hate and promote equality is not censorship, but rather, vigorous "counterspeech" and activism.

What is hate speech? How does a person suffer when they are vilified? What can public policy do to redress it? This text proposes a new type of hate speech policy - "speaking back" - providing institutional, material and educational support to enable the victims of hate speech to respond.

Bias crimes are a scourge on our society. Is there a more terrifying image in the mind's eye than that of the burning cross? Punishing Hate examines the nature of bias-motivated violence and provides a foundation for understanding bias crimes and their treatment under the U.S. legal system. In this tightly argued book, Frederick Lawrence poses the question: Should bias crimes be punished more harshly than similar crimes that are not motivated by bias? He answers strongly in the affirmative, as do a great many scholars and citizens, but he is the first to provide a solid theoretical grounding for this intuitive agreement, and a detailed model for a bias crimes statute based on the theory. The book also acts as a strong corrective to recent claims that concern about hate crimes is overblown. A former prosecutor, Lawrence argues that the enhanced punishment of bias crimes, with a substantial federal law enforcement role, is not only permitted by doctrines of criminal and constitutional law but also mandated by our societal commitment to equality. Drawing upon a wide variety of sources, from law and criminology, to sociology and social psychology, to today's news, Punishing Hate will have a lasting impact on the contentious debate over treatment of bias crimes in America.

In a contemporary setting of increasing social division and marginalisation, Policing Hate Crime interrogates the complexities of prejudice motivated crime and effective policing practices. Hate crime has become a barometer for contemporary police relations with vulnerable and marginalised communities. But how do police effectively lead conversations with such communities about problems arising from prejudice? Contemporary police are expected to be active agents in the pursuit of social justice and human rights by stamping out prejudice and group-based animosity. At the same time, police have been criticised in over-policing targeted communities as potential perpetrators, as well as under-policing these same communities as victims of crime. Despite this history, the demand for impartial law enforcement requires police to change their engagement with targeted communities and kindle trust as priorities in strengthening their response to hate crime. Drawing upon a research partnership between police and academics, this book entwines current law enforcement responses with key debates on the meaning of hate crime to explore the potential for misunderstandings of hate crime between police and communities, and illuminates ways to overcome communication difficulties. This book will be important reading for students taking courses in hate crime, as well as victimology, policing, and crime and community.