The Pulse Nightclub Tragedy in Orlando shocked the nation, after a gunman who identified as being Muslim walked in to a gay nightclub and gunned down 49 people and injured 53 more. In addition to the LGBTQ+ community being targeted, the Latinx community had been targeted as well, considering it was Latin night. With many of those affected being of traditional college age, local colleges and universities took action to offer support. Focusing on the Pulse shooting, I explored the ways in which higher education institutions offered support after this tragedy occurred, while reviewing other tragedies and the responses by local colleges and universities. By using a document study of newspapers, institutional publications, and literature, I looked for information on how students were supported and noted best practices by the institutions which offered the most support to minority student groups. Additionally, I examined the themes and patterns regarding inclusion and what tactics were helpful for higher education institutions that could be implemented after a tragedy.

<p>This dissertation is a collection of three papers. Each paper constitutes a chapter. Each chapter empirically examines an aspect of bias-motivated behavior in the United States. </p> <p>The first chapter studies the impact of penalty enhancement statutes by state legislatures on the incidence of hate crimes in the United States. Penalty enhancements may deter crime, however, the passing of such laws may also increase awareness among law enforcement officials and increase arrests. Using administrative data on hate crimes and a difference-in-differences method that leverages state-level variation in the introduction of legislation, this paper does not find a significant effect of the state enactment of penalty enhancement statutes on hate-crime incidence rates. </p> <p>The second chapter examines whether election timing and election outcomes affect the incidence of crimes motivated by hate and intolerance. Using administrative data and a difference-in-differences design that compares election with non-election years, I show that hate crimes increase by an average of 28 percent in the three weeks around a US presidential election. This effect is larger in recent presidential elections and when there is no incumbent candidate. Second, using a similar design and cross-state variation in the timing of gubernatorial elections, I find no evidence that these state-level elections affect hate-crime incidence. Third, using regression-discontinuity designs based on vote counts, I find that the number of hate crimes is not affected by presidential or gubernatorial election outcomes. </p> <p>The third chapter studies the impact of presidential and gubernatorial election timing on the level of toxicity present on social media platforms such as Twitter. Together with Sameer Borwankar, I empirically determine the extent to which the toxicity of Twitter content changes during election times as compared to non-election times. We randomly sample Twitter users and collect all tweets made by this sample around election time. We use a difference-in-differences identification leveraging election and non-election years. We further focus on toxic content that is motivated by political polarization and examine various bias-motivation categories that come up in this content as well as the variation in the intensity of toxicity between national and local election times.  </p> <p><br></p>

no / This paper analyses the verbal and textual hostility employed by rioters, politicians and the media in Sydney (Australia) in December 2005 in the battle over Sutherland Shire¿s Cronulla Beach. By better understanding the linguistic conventions underlying all forms of maledictive hate, we are better able to address the false antimonies between free speech and the regulation of speech. It is also argued that understanding the harms of hate speech provides us with the tools necessary to create a more responsive framework for criminalising some forms of hate speech as a preliminary process in reducing or eliminating hate violence.

En France, entre les années 70 et fin 90, alors que la notion de crime raciste occupait fréquemment la sphère militante et médiatique, elle ne constituait pas une catégorie juridique dans la sphère judiciaire. La mésentente concernant le traitement des crimes racistes semble trouver son origine dans le fait que deux conceptions d’une même réalité ont pu coexister pendant une trentaine d’années : la réalité du groupe concerné par ces violences d’une part et celle émanant du droit étatique d’autre part. Alors que pour les premiers, le caractère raciste des violences ne faisait aucun doute, pour les parlementaires l’idée même d’un mobile raciste a régulièrement été rejetée. D’un point de vue législatif, il a fallu attendre l’année 2003 pour que la France adopte une loi permettant de prendre en compte l’intention raciste d’un crime. Depuis cette date, sous certaines conditions, le mobile raciste peut constituer une circonstance aggravante dans les infractions de type criminel. Cette thèse s’intéresse à ces deux vérités et aux circonstances qui ont déterminé leur existence. Elle vise notamment à interroger le rôle joué par le droit étatique dans la production et le maintien des catégories ethnoraciales par delà la politisation des violences qui en résultent. D’un point de vue empirique, l’enquête a consisté à confronter la parole des militants ayant dénoncé une double violence, celle provoquée par les agressions d’une part et celle induite par leur traitement pénal d’autre part, à un ensemble de sources archivistiques émanant des services du ministère de l’Intérieur et du Parlement. D’un point de vue théorique, les apports de la sociologie et de l’histoire de l’immigration ont été complétés en intégrant les réflexions des théories de l’ethnicité et de la Critical Race Theory. En définitive, cette recherche met en évidence le fait que l’universalisme républicain fait partie intégrante du processus de racialisation. En revenant sur les dispositions majeures de la politique d’immigration et sur la figure stigmatique de l’homme arabe, un premier axe s’intéresse à la manière dont le droit étatique a particularisé une catégorie d’individus en participant à la production des catégories ethnoraciales. Un deuxième axe vise à caractériser les crimes racistes qui ont été dénoncés entre les années 70 et fin 90. Un dernier axe enfin étudie la carrière juridique du mobile raciste durant cette même période. Il expose la manière dont la législation antiraciste a invisibilisé la question des crimes racistes et maintenu les catégories ethnoraciales en appliquant des règles universelles à des groupes qui ont auparavant été différenciés. / In France between the 1970s and the 1990s, while the notion of racist crime was frequently brought up in the activist and media fields, it was not a legal category in the field of justice. The disagreement regarding the treatment of racist crimes seems to find its roots in the fact that two different conceptions of a same reality could coexist for thirty years: thereality of the group that was primarily concerned by such violence on the first hand, and that flowing from the State law on the other hand. Whereas for the former, the racist component of the violence was out of doubt, the members of the Parliament regularly rejected the mere idea of racist motive. In legal terms, it was not until 2003 that France adopted a law allowing toconsider the racist motive of a crime. Since then, and only under certain circumstances, the racist motive can constitute an aggravating factor for criminal offenses. This dissertation investigates these two truths and the circumstances that led to their existence. In particular, this research seeks to interrogate the role that the State law played in the production andconservation of ethnoracial categories, beyond the politicization of the violence flowing from such categories. In empirical terms, the study compared the discourses of the activists that denounced this dual violence, that provoked by the aggressions and that of their penal treatment, to an array of archival sources from the Interior Ministry’s services and theParliament. In theoretical terms, this research completes the contributions made by the sociology and history of immigration by integrating the theories of ethnicity and Critical Race Theory. Overall, this dissertation sheds light on the fact that Republican universalism is an integral part of the process of racialization. Through the study of the main dispositions of theimmigration policy and of the stigmatic figure of the Arab man, a first part investigates the way the State law particularized a category of people by taking part in the production of ethnoracial categories. A second part seeks to characterize the racist crimes that were denounced between the 1970s and 1990s. A last part investigates the judicial career of theracist motive. It shows how the anti-racist legislation blinded the question of racist crimes and maintained the ethnoracial categories by enforcing universal rules to groups that were formerly differentiated.

Im Mittelpunkt dieser Arbeit steht die Frage, inwieweit in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland mit den Mitteln des Strafrechts auf rechtsextremistisch / fremdenfeindlich motivierte Gewalttaten reagiert werden sollte. Dabei geht es insbesondere um die Untersuchung, ob es einer Neuregelung im Strafrecht bedarf. Nach der Darstellung der kriminalpolitischen Lage wird zunächst ein Blick zurück auf den Umgang der deutschen Justiz mit Gesinnungstätern in der Vergangenheit seit 1945 gerichtet. Im Ergebnis wird festgestellt, dass sich die Justiz nicht zur Bekämpfung politischer Einstellungen oder gesellschaftlicher Skandale eignet. Die Untersuchung der Rechtsprechung bezogen auf fremdenfeindlich / rechtsextremistisch motivierte Gewalttaten seit 1990 bis heute zeigt, dass eine entsprechende Motivation in besonderer Weise, meist strafverschärfend berücksichtigt wird. Das bestehende Strafrecht erfasst diese Taten und bedroht sie mit angemessenen Strafen. Daraus ergibt sich die Frage, ob dennoch aus symbolischen Gründen eine neue strafrechtliche Regelung notwendig ist. In diesem Zusammenhang werden die "hate crime"-Regelungen der USA und einiger ausgewählter europäischer Staaten dargestellt. Diese sind entweder eigenständige Straftatbestände oder - überwiegend - Strafzumessungsregeln. Im Ergebnis wird für das deutsche Strafrecht eine Neuregelung, die einzig im Bereich der Strafzumessung realisierbar wäre, abgelehnt. / This work is focussed on the issue to what extend the penal law should be used against rightwing extremistic and xenophobic motivated crimes in the Federal Republic of Germany. It is investigated, whether a new legal regulation is necessary or not. First the current political situation regarding that crimes is discussed. Afterwards it is shown how certain political convictions have been taken into consideration by judicature in Germany from 1945 to the present. As a result it is found, that judicature is not a proper way to deal with political convictions or social scandals. Investigating the dispensation regarding rightwing extremistic and xenophobic motivated crimes since 1990 one finds that such a motivation leads to a more severe sentencing. Crimes likes that are already covered by the existing penal law and there are reasonable penalties for it. The resulting question is, whether a new regulation in penal law might be necessary for symbolic reasons. The hate crime concepts of the United States of America and some selected european countries are investigated in this context. Either these are separate penal laws or mostly sentencing regulations. It is shown, that only a sentencing regulation might be considered for the german penal law. As the final result, this is refused by the author.

The diploma thesis is focused on the specifics of violence against the homeless women. The thesis is divided in theoretical and empirical part. Theoretical part is further divided into three chapters, structured from the general description of homelessness to the specifics of violence that is happening on the homeless women. The goal of the empirical part is also to identify barriers and preconditions for the solution of violence and recommendations for optimization of help with violence. The empirical part is based on two data sets, one of them is social workers/curators, second is homeless women. The research is qualitative and is conducted in the form of semi-structured interviews. In the final part of empirical research, a comparative analysis of both data sets is performed. From the analysis are derived the conclusions and recommendations on how to contribute to setting more effective means of solving violence against the homeless women.

There are a lot of hidden statistics regarding the extent of hate crimes in Sweden. Statisticsshow that approximately only 2-4 percent of hate crimes committed because of the victim’ssexual orientation are reported to the police when comparing numbers of actual police reports and the statistics from the national safety survey (Nationella trygghetsundersökningen). In England/Wales the rate of police reports regarding hate crimes motivated by the victims sexual orientation is higher, approximately 31,5 percent of all hate crimes in this category are reported to the police. The governments in both Sweden and England/Wales have in the last years committed to strategies aimed at battling the problems regarding hate crimes, including measures for increased reporting. Through policy analysis and process-tracing, this study has been performed with the purpose of investigating which measures have been taken in the both strategies to see which measures are to be preferred when battling hate crime and increasing the victims’ propensity of reporting hate crimes. The results show that in Sweden the approach have been centrally controlled with goals set by the decision makers high up in the hierarchy, while in England/Wales the methods and measures to a significantly greater extent has been created and customized in discussions with the vulnerable groups. There is also a greater focus on making different ways of reporting hate crimes available to the public in England/Wales in comparison with Sweden whereas the only option available is to report a hate crime directly to the police.

Hate crime is a collective name for criminal acts committed due to the offender’s prejudice or hate against an individual or a group of people. There is no explicit legal definition of “hate crime” in Swedish criminal law, but in 1994 a rule called “straffskärpningregeln” has been introduced, primarily to combat racist crime and protect vulnerable groups in society. The rule means that all types of crime may constitute hate crimes if the motive is to aggrieve a person or group of people because of race, colour, ethnic origin, creed, sexual orientation or similar circumstance (Penal Code 29 chapter 2§ 7p).The aim of this essay is to study and investigate how the Swedish judicial system handles hate crime cases, but also to describe constructions of crime victims and discuss perpetrator’s motives. In order to gain a better understanding of hate crimes in the Swedish context, the ideal victim theory has been applied. With the use of critical discourse analysis, I have identified three different discourses. The results of my study are among other findings that the Swedish legal system need to make visible how “straffskärpningregeln” is applied. The perpetrator paints a stereotypical picture of “the others” by categorizing themselves as “we” and the others as “them” and thereby constructing differentiated categories.

State level bias crime legislation was passed throughout much of the United States over the last three decades. Beyond their prosecutorial or instrumental application, bias or hate crime laws serve an expressive or messaging function. This function is meant to promote societal cohesion through the rejection of hateful ideologies, as well as signal to attacked or marginalized members of communities that the government is directly addressing the effects of bias crime. As the number of reported hate crimes in the United States remains essentially level, it is of importance to assess how well the expressive function is performing. Following a background on the development, debate, and variation of bias or hate crime law, this project focuses on a content analysis of prominent state level media with the expectation that the expressive success of laws can be detected in bias crime coverage. It is found that bias crime related stories were featured with greater regularity in the states of Washington and Minnesota, which have passed extensive bias crime legislation. Bias crime related stories were far less prominent in South Carolina, which has no bias crime laws. The State of Wyoming, another state with no bias crime laws, displayed a surprisingly large amount of coverage, primarily as a result of the high-profile murder of Matthew Shepard in 1998.

博士(法学) / Doctor of Laws / 同志社大学 / Doshisha University