Assessing the public's demand for hate crime penalties

Political Identity, Type of Victim, and Hate Crime‐Related Beliefs as Predictors of Views Concerning Hate Crime Penalty Enhancement Laws

“…Our results extend empirical data on perceptions of penalty enhancements in two ways. Second, our findings dovetail with speculations of Steen and Cohen (2004) that in a specific case, people may become concerned with proportionality and fairness in punishment. Of their coded rationales, victim-related beliefs, morality statements, and legal arguments, appear to replicate, at least to some extent, in the content of perceptions of anti-African American, antigay, and antitransgender crimes in the current study.…”

“…Cabeldue, Cramer, Kehn, Crosby, and Anastasi (in press) examined public perceptions of hate crime laws as part of the broader scope of public attitudes toward a policy issues such as hate crimes. These studies (Cabeldue et al, in press;Dunbar & Molina, 2004;Johnson & Byers, 2003;Steen & Cohen;2004) examined how participant attitudes (e.g., politics, prejudice) are correlated with hate crime-related beliefs. Factor analyses yielded results showing that all four subscale domains incorporated some aspect of beliefs about hate crime laws and punishment.…”

“…Johnson and Byers (2003) demonstrated that support for hate crime laws was greatly enhanced when LGB persons were not among the protected groups, and that higher education was associated with support for those laws. However, support for and recommendation of penalty enhancement wanes when presented with a specific case (Hart & Teeter, 1999a;Steen & Cohen, 2004). Cabeldue, Cramer, Kehn, Crosby, and Anastasi (in press) examined public perceptions of hate crime laws as part of the broader scope of public attitudes toward a policy issues such as hate crimes.…”

The legislative context of prejudice motivated victimisation: perceptions of police legitimacy and citizen decisions to report hate crime incidents

“…A U.S. study conducted by Steen and Cohen (2004) found that there is little public support for harsher penalties for PMC offenders. Steen and Cohen (2004) (Franklin, 2002;Jacobs & Potter, 1998).…”

“…More awareness needs to be created of legislation dealing with hatred and prejudice in Australia, as according to Charlesworth (2015, February), people might not be aware that hate crime is a legal issue. So far, only few studies exist that have explored victims' knowledge around the law and around police processes (see more recently Chakraborti et al, 2014) or have investigated the publics' overall understanding and legal consciousness of hate crime (see, e.g., Johnson & Byers, 2003;Lyons, 2008;Steen & Cohen, 2004).…”