The Cause Of Hate Crime In The United States

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In the U.S. there are many crimes that have been established over thousands of years. Crime has been an ongoing battle that psychologists have tried to determine the cause and effect of why these crimes keep occurring. The crime that I decided to state my opinion and do my research paper on was hate crimes. Hate crimes in my opinion is a huge crime problem here in the United States. Hate crime has been a problem in my opinion since the civil right ages. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation the definition of a hate crime is” a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, Congress has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or …show more content…

One of the biggest challenges in my opinion was having the support of congress passing legislation to protect, giving awareness, and educating the nation on hate crimes. On February 22, 1989 Congress had reintroduced the Hate Crimes Statistics Act. This Act required the Department of Justice to collect and publish data about crimes motivated by hatred based on race, religion, ethnicity and sexual orientation (Human Right Campaign). This was the first step that was taking in this long journey. On November 4, 1993, The Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act was added as an amendment to the Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which stated that "A crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability or sexual orientation of any person."(Basic …show more content…

Showing bias to a certain group in our society should not be how we express our differences of another community. We should not be hated because the color of our skins, our sexual orientation, or the religion that we chose to believe in. I know it is hard to accept that things are changing in American today but we must adapt to the change and not live with such hate in our hearts. Having the proper prevention strategies intact will help these crimes decrease each year. Educating everyone on the topic of hate crimes will give everyone a sense of understanding of the severeness of is crime and the consequences giving when this crime is

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