Open Access. Powered by Scholars. Published by Universities.®
Articles 1 - 8 of 8
Full-Text Articles in Law
Reframing Hate, Lu-In Wang
Reframing Hate, Lu-In Wang
Articles
The concept and naming of “hate crime,” and the adoption of special laws to address it, provoked controversy and raised fundamental questions when they were introduced in the 1980s. In the decades since, neither hate crime itself nor those hotly debated questions have abated. To the contrary, hate crime has increased in recent years—although the prominent target groups have shifted over time—and the debate over hate crime laws has reignited as well. The still-open questions range from the philosophical to the doctrinal to the pragmatic: What justifies the enhanced punishment that hate crime laws impose based on the perpetrator’s motivation? …
The Effect Of Criminal Records On Access To Employment, Amanda Agan, Sonja B. Starr
The Effect Of Criminal Records On Access To Employment, Amanda Agan, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
This paper adds to the empirical evidence that criminal records are a barrier to employment. Using data from 2,655 online applications sent on behalf of fictitious male applicants, we show that employers are 60 percent more likely to call applicants that do not have a felony conviction. We further investigate whether this effect varies based on applicant race (black versus white), crime type (drug versus property crime), industry (restaurants versus retail), jurisdiction (New Jersey versus New York City), local crime rate, and local racial composition. Although magnitudes vary somewhat, in every subsample the conviction effect is large, significant, and negative.
Testing Racial Profiling: Empirical Assessment Of Disparate Treatment By Police, Sonja B. Starr
Testing Racial Profiling: Empirical Assessment Of Disparate Treatment By Police, Sonja B. Starr
Articles
In this Article, I explore why measuring disparate-treatment discrimination by police is so difficult, and consider the ways that researchers' existing tools can make headway on these challenges and the ways they fall short. Lab experiments have provided useful information about implicit racial bias, but they cannot directly tell us how these biases actually affect real-world behavior. Meanwhile, for observational researchers, there are various hurdles, but the hardest one to overcome is generally the absence of data on the citizen conduct that at least partially shapes policing decisions. Most crime, and certainly most noncriminal "suspicious" or probable-cause-generating behavior, goes unreported …
Road Work: Racial Profiling And Drug Interdiction On The Highway, Samuel R. Gross, Katherine Y. Bames
Road Work: Racial Profiling And Drug Interdiction On The Highway, Samuel R. Gross, Katherine Y. Bames
Articles
Hypocrisy about race is hardly new in America, but the content changes. Recently the spotlight has been on racial profiling. The story of Colonel Carl Williams of the New Jersey State Police is a wellknown example. On Sunday, February 28, 1999, the Newark Star Ledger published a lengthy interview with Williams in which he talked about race and drugs: "Today... the drug problem is cocaine or marijuana. It is most likely a minority group that's involved with that."4 Williams condemned racial profiling - "As far as racial profiling is concerned, that is absolutely not right. It never has been con-doned …
Hate Crimes And Everyday Discrimination: Influences Of And On The Social Context, Lu-In Wang
Hate Crimes And Everyday Discrimination: Influences Of And On The Social Context, Lu-In Wang
Articles
This article discusses aspects of hate crime that make it somewhat unexceptional. By making these points, I do not in any way mean to imply that hate crime is not a problem worthy of attention in the law. To the contrary, I believe that to point out the unexceptional aspects of hate crimes is to highlight just how important a problem hate crime is, and may help us to develop more effective ways of addressing it. My points are based largely on lessons drawn from social science and historical research on the effects of and motivations behind bias-related violence. Specifically, …
'Suitable Targets'? Parallels And Connections Between 'Hate Crimes' And 'Driving While Black', Lu-In Wang
'Suitable Targets'? Parallels And Connections Between 'Hate Crimes' And 'Driving While Black', Lu-In Wang
Articles
While hate crimes may tend to be less routine and more violent than discriminatory traffic stops, closer examination of each shows the need to complicate our understanding of both. The work of social scientists who have studied racial profiling reveals striking similarities and connections between these two practices. In particular, both hate crimes and racial profiling tend to be condemned only at extremes, in situations where they appear to be irrational and excessive, but overlooked in cases where they seem logical or are expected. The tendency to see only the most extreme cases as problematic, however, fails to recognize that …
Recognizing Opportunistic Bias Crimes, Lu-In Wang
Recognizing Opportunistic Bias Crimes, Lu-In Wang
Articles
The federal approach to punishing bias-motivated crimes is more limited than the state approach. Though the federal and state methods overlap in some respects, two features of the federal approach restrict its range of application. First, federal law prohibits a narrower range of conduct than do most state bias crimes laws. In order to be punishable under federal law, bias-motivated conduct must either constitute a federal crime or interfere with a federally protected right or activity-requirements that exclude racially motivated assault, property damage and many other common violent or destructive bias offenses. In most states, however, hate crimes encompass a …
The Stories, The Statistics And The Law: Why 'Driving While Black' Matters University Of Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 84, No. 2, 1999, David A. Harris
The Stories, The Statistics And The Law: Why 'Driving While Black' Matters University Of Minnesota Law Review, Vol. 84, No. 2, 1999, David A. Harris
Articles
Racial profiling of drivers - often called "driving while black" - has taken an increasingly important role in the public debate on issues of race and criminal justice. It is one of the few such issues that has penetrated not only the public discourse, but the legislative process as well. This article takes three different approaches in attempting to explain that racial profiling is important not only for its own sake, but because it is a manifestation - both a symbol and a symptom - of all of the most difficult problems that we face at the intersection of race …