Hate Crimes Involving Children And The Differential Association Theory

A study of Hate Crimes involving children and how they are influenced by their parents and peers. A summary of Sutherlands, Differential Association theory is included to explain this study. Several journals and resources were used to explain and define Hate Crimes and the Differential Association Theory. Included in this study are statistics form the National Crime Reports and information from experiments on peer and parental influence on children. The results of these experiments imply that strong family and peer influence at an early age is the backbone of a child’s beliefs.

Hate Crimes Involving Children and the Differential Association Theory

A hate crime is any bias motivated criminal incident committed against an individual or group because of their race, sex, ethnicity, disability, and/or beliefs. In most cases, hate crimes are committed by the majority against the minority. Hate crimes range from vandalism or defacing property to rape or homicide, but in every case, someone gets hurt. According to the National Crime Reports in 1998, a total of

definitions of legal code, that believe they are superior because of race, sex, ethnicity, disability, and/or beliefs, and they believe that they need to protect themselves from those who are inferior. These people believe that that they are superior in all aspects of life, and they should not have to associate with those who are inferior.

A gentleman by the name of Keenan performed an experiment in which he monitored 567 caucasian boys from kindergarten to seventh grade. In this study, he monitored boys that did have a significant influence from a deviant friend, and those that did not have a significant influence from a deviant friend. His hypothesis was that family experiences might also moderate the impact of delinquent friends on delinquent behavior. His conclusion suggests that delinquent friends had a greater impact on delinquent behavior for adolescents who had weak family support, than for those who had strong family support (Vitaro, 2000). This experiment supports Sutherland’s Differential Association Theory and the impact that outside influence has on an individual.

7,755 bias motivated criminal incidents were reported to the FBI from police and sheriff departments throughout the United States. Of these incidents, 4,321 of them were motivated by racial bias, 1,390 were religious bias, 1,260 were by sexual orientation, 754 were by ethnicity or national origin, 25 were by disability, and 5 were of multiple bias (NCJRS, 1998). This means that over 50% of all hate crimes are motivated by racial bias, and of these racially motivated crimes, more than 50% of them are against blacks. Unfortunately, though these crimes are reported they usually go unsolved do to the to the fact that most of these crimes are committed by random offenders. In most cases, the victim has had no prior association with the offender; therefore law enforcement agencies have little to no assistance in solving the crime. Only 14% of all state agencies have specially designated personnel assigned to address hate crimes, 33% with special policies or procedures that address hate crimes, and 4% with civilians assigned to units to address hate crimes. That leaves 49% of all state agencies with no special policies or procedures governing hate crimes (NCJRS, 1998). These crimes are not considered to be as prevalent as many other crimes therefore law enforcement agencies don’t designate the resources to these crimes that they do for other crimes. Unf

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