Reply must be at least 200-300 words and at least 2 citations from sources such as your textbook, peer-reviewed journal articles, and the Bible. The thread and replies must follow current APA format.
Maxfield, M. G., & Babbie, E. R. (2018). Research methods for criminal justice and criminology (8th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning. ISBN: 9781337091824.
**Kamesha***
Hate crimes is a particular dimension of a crime and is defined as crimes committed against people based on biases (What We Investigate, 2019). Those biases can be against a persons religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or gender (What we investigate, 2019). The conceptual definition of a hate crime would be committing the offense of physical assault against a person because they identify as transgender, because they are black, or because they practice the Muslim religion. This is people’s idea of a hate crime based on what they may view as a hate crime or what constitutes a hate crime to them. The operational definition of a hate crime would be having a law enforcement agency study the following three questions: How many assaults have been reported to your agency? How many of those assaults involved people of a defined class of persons such as religion, race, national origin, sexual orientation, gender identity, disability, or gender? How many of those assaults were committed due to a bias?
In the news article written by Brad Streicher titled Hate Crimes More than Double in Texas 2018, According to FBI Data, he examines the FBI numbers for hate crimes in Texas. This article represents an operational definition of hate crimes as this article examines the number of reported hate crimes across Texas Law enforcement agencies who voluntarily submitted their numbers to the FBI. This article discusses the data comparatively using the previous year of 2017. The numbers reflected 455 hate crimes in the state of Texas for 2018, versus 190 hate crimes in the state of Texas for 2017, an increase of 190% (Streicher, 2019).
In the research report completed by the Equality and Human Rights Commission, entitled Causes and Motivations of Hate Crime, takes a look at what a hate crime is and attempts to understand the causes and motivations of hate crimes offenses for the protected groups under the law (Walters, Brown, & Wiedlitzka, 2016). This report represents an example of a conceptual definition of hate crimes as defined by British law.
Hate motivated crimes are serious crimes and important for law enforcement to address quickly. Hate crimes have been committed throughout the history of our country, often times without any penalties or reprecussions. The importance of combating hate crimes has plummeted to the forefront of everyone in societies radar in recent years. The bible is very clear and has a very strong message regarding hate. Leviticus 19:17 (KJV) states Thou shalt not hate thy brother in thine heart: thou shalt in any wise rebuke thy neighbour, and not suffer sin upon him. As Christians it is equally important we display support for the word, and rebuke any type of hateful behavior towards a person or group of persons. It is necessary as members of society we show an intolerance for any type of crime centered and motivated by hate.
References
Streicher, B. (2019, November 14). Hate Crimes More Than Double in Texas for 2018, According to FBI Data. KVUE ABC News. Retrieved from https://www.kvue.com/article/news/investigations/defenders/texas-hate-crimes-more-than-double-2018-fbi/269-680cc17b-244e-40c1-88cc-186a66ee928f
Walters, M.A., Brown, R., and Wiedlitzka, S. (2016). Causes and Motivations of Hate Crimes. Equality and Human Rights Commission. Manchester: Arndale House. Retrieved from https://www.equalityhumanrights.com/sites/default/files/research-report-102-causes-and-motivations-of-hate-crime.pdf
What We Investigate. (2019, November). Retrieved from FBI: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/civil-rights/hate-crimes
