JUST6605 (JUST601)

This week’s readings have focused on hate crime offenders, they discuss their motivations, their backgrounds, how they may relate to other criminals, as well as build upon previous research and theoretical standpoints. Discussions about articles provided by McDevitt, Lehman, Nasi.

The readings this week provide us with arguments pertaining to speech in relation to hate crime laws. Within these articles many issues are brought up about what should be included, what should not be included, how they should be inferred, arguments for and against these rationales, all with supporting evidence and previous cases to back up these claims.

This summary contains information from three articles discussing hate crime and related laws. We take a look at several cases and discuss how hate crime laws may infringe on a person's first amendment rights. It is also discussed where the criminal justice system may go from here, with the options of reversing old case outcomes in order to properly punish for hate crimes.

Provides eight sources including peer reviewed articles within the last ten years pertaining to hate speech, hate crimes, and social media both in the U.S. and globally.

The focus of this paper is to discuss hate crimes within the United States, however, to narrow down such a broad topic I ask the question of “How has social media fueled or prevented hate crimes?”. A review of literature will inform us of which may be the case and includes inclusion and exclusion criteria as well as key words to aid in a search for articles.