Lit Review

For this Literature review post, I will pull articles from two different sources that I found using Google Scholar. The first piece of literature that I will focus on is called American Skinheads: the criminology and control of hate crime.

In American Skinheads: the criminology and control of hate crime, there is a focus on why the Skinhead movement carries out hate crimes, along with the culture and ideology of the movement. In the introduction of the book, the author describes the Skinhead movement mainly as a group that attracts members who feel disconnected and are looking for a sense of belonging. This is the start of what bonds these frustrated youths together, and ultimately fuels the group activity that they engage in, and defines their group. On page 107 of American Skinheads, the author explains that the majority of the actions that modern skinheads involve themselves with, falls right in line with the description of a hate crime under the hate crime statute. He then goes on to describe how hate crimes differ from acts of terrorism, and what is necessary to constitute one or the other in a crime. The example that was given was a white man beating and killing an African American homeless man in Florida. The prosecutors sought to charge the white male with a hate crime and an act of terrorism. In order to charge someone with terrorism, according to the author, their crime must have had some underlying social or political agenda. This act of violence did not have a political agenda, yet the white man did have and overt prejudice against African Americans, which was characteristic of the skinhead movement he belonged to, and he was therefore charged with a hate crime for the beating and murder.

The other source that I used to engage this post is Hate Crimes: A New/ Old Problem. In this book, the author utilizes data on hate crimes throughout the years, to make correlations and show the fluctuation in these types of hate driven crime. Gad J Bensinger, the author, explains that hate crime has reached record highs in the recent years. Bensinger also stresses the fact that legislation as well and crime fighting need to evolve in order to combat this rise in hate crime, and that without an increase in legislation, these numbers will continue to rise. One of the most interesting correlations in this piece, is that Bensinger believes that with an increase in American diversity, comes an equal rise in bigotry and hate. If this is the case, what things need to change to stop this escalating cycle?