Research Symposium

BIO

I am a senior doing an undergrad-grad program. My goal is to acquire my master's in Spring 2025 after graduating with my bachelor's in Summer 2024. My interests in criminology is the psychological background of crime and offending, as well of the role that motives and behaviors play in distinguishing offender from offender. I am also interested in the role biosocial criminology plays into all of this. I have recently gained a new in hate crime due to taking Dr. Lantz's, my mentor on this research, graduate hate crimes seminar course. I decided to conduct my research on a pressing topic in hate crime literature.

Protecting Gender: State Variation in the Inclusion of Gender in Hate Crime Legislation

Abstract

Hate crimes occur globally and there is substantial variation in the responses law enforcement, government, and communities have towards this phenomenon. The majority of the United States has made efforts towards eradicating prejudices that manifest into hate crimes by passing legislation. Many states protect characteristic criterion of potential hate crime victims such as race, but the focus of this research lays in inclusion of gender. While 31 of 50 states include gender as a protected category for hate crimes, many states do not. This omission has serious implications, including the negative effects it has on victims and society as a whole. In this research, the differing responses to female victims of crime will be explored in states which protect gender under hate crime legislation, relative to those that do not. Execution of law enforcement procedures after the occurrence of a crime with female victims will be analyzed in both categories of states. The responses of victims to their own victimization will also be explored. This will be accomplished by performing a comparison between a case of a female hate crime victim in a state that includes gender and a case in a state in which gender is not included. The purpose of this research is to gather information on how including gender in hate crime policy can affect they ways in which victims and law enforcement respond to gender-motivated hate crime. These implications will then serve as a proxy to highlight the importance and necessity of all states protecting gender.

Keywords: hate crime, gender, florida