Research Symposium

BIO

My name is Sydney Buser and I am a second year student at Florida State University. I am a criminology major with a Spanish minor but hope to complete a dual degree with my second major being psychology. I aspire to work for law enforcement at the federal level. I am interested in researching anything within my two fields of research. This year with the undergraduate research program I worked under Dr. Lantz on a research project about federal hate crime offenders.

Hate Crime and Typology: a Comprehensive Database for Federal Hate Crime Offenders

Abstract

Hate crimes are prevalent in the US. They can be violent or non-violent, and they can be directed towards any demographic/ group of people. The research we conduct serves to create a comprehensive database of federal hate crime offenders. The purpose of this is to modernize the data- the last such database is extremely outdated and is no longer representative of current trends. I will discuss how the work will allow researchers from many different fields to draw conclusions such as cause/ effect trends with hate crime and mental illness. I will talk further on how the database will aid the criminal Justice system in targeted detection and prevention for hate crime. One of the main things I will discuss will be the research methodology. We are given a master list of federal hate crime offenders ranging all the way from the early 2000's to present years. As researchers, we have to choose offenders to code into the database. We have to use the internet and any/ all available sources to find out an array of information about the offender, their crime, the legal proceedings, and the victims. I will also talk about how our findings show that offenders often have previous histories of childhood victimizations or mental health illnesses. Because this is an ongoing project, any concrete conclusions have yet to be found.

Keywords: Hate Crime Database