Law Commons^™

The Struggle Against Hate Crime: Movement At A Crossroads, Terry A. Maroney

Vanderbilt Law School Faculty Publications

The 1980s and 1990s witnessed an extraordinary amount of police, legislative, judicial, scholarly, and community activity around hate crime. Such activity was attributable to a new "anti-hate-crime movement," conditions for which were created by the convergence in previous decades of two very different social movements - civil rights and victims' rights. This anti-hate-crime movement has been radiply assimilated into the institutions of criminal justice, with the result that anti-hate-crime measures now reflect the culture and priorities of those institutions. The civil rights and victims' rights movements created collective beliefs, structural resources, and political opportunities that facilitated the emergence of a …