State‐Level Determinants of Hate Crime Reporting: Examining the Impact of Structural and Social Movement Influences

• Published date: 01 January 2020
• Author: Christie L. Parris,Heather L. Scheuerman,Regina Werum,Alison H. Faupel
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/lapo.12139
• Date: 01 January 2020

State-Level Determinants of Hate Crime Reporting:

Examining the Impact of Structural and Social

Movement Influences

HEATHER L. SCHEUERMAN, CHRISTIE L. PARRIS, ALISON H. FAUPEL and

REGINA WERUM

In this article, we investigate factors affecting hate crime policies by examining anti-LGBT

(lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) hate crime reports as a type of policy implementation.

Analyzing state-level data drawn primarily from the US Census between 1995 and 2008, we

examine how structural and social movement mobilization factors explain hate crime reporting.

We find that anti-LGBT hate crimes are more likely to be reported in more urbanized states

and in states with both split political elites and a greater number of LGBT social movement

organizations. We discuss the implications of our findings for separating the drivers of policy

passage from policy implementation and for complementary criminological and social move-

ment explanations for hate crime reporting.

I. INTRODUCTION

Social movement and sociolegal scholarship generally focuses on the passage of legisla-

tion as a measure of movement outcomes, examining how underlying structural condi-

tions and the capacity of and choices made by social movements might explain

differential policy success (Jenness and Grattet 1996; Boutcher, Kronberg, and Werum

2018). While this research has typically treated policy passage as the outcome of interest,

social movements themselves often focus on how well those policies are implemented,

recognizing that legal change is only half the battle (Andrews 2001; Coe 2012; Sturdy,

Smith-Merry, and Freeman 2012; Gibson 2017).

1

In this article, we examine the enforcement of hate crime policy as a case for exploring

whether the same factors that drive policy passage also contribute to policy implementa-

tion (see Haider-Markel 1998). Hate crime enforcement is a complex process that

requires law enforcement to detect, investigate, report, and prosecute crimes as hate

crimes, providing multiple opportunities for the state to decline enforcement (Grattet

and Jenness 2008). Anti-LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender) hate crimes in par-

ticular face a wide gap between their occurrence and the willingness of law enforcement

to label those acts as hate crimes (Grattet and Jenness 2008; Stotzer 2010b; Herek 2017).

Address correspondence to: Heather L. Scheuerman, Department of Justice Studies, James Madison

University, Moody Hall 213, MSC 1205, Harrisonburg, VA, 22807, USA; Telephone 540-568-4332;

Email: scheuehl@jmu.edu.

LAW & POLICY, Vol. 42, No. 1, January 2020

©2019 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2019 University of Denver and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

doi: 10.1111/lapo.12139

ISSN 0265-8240

According to the 2015 National Crime Victimization Survey, approximately 22 percent

of hate crimes were due to sexual orientation bias, resulting in an estimate of over

45,000 incidents (Masucci and Langton 2017). However, law enforcement agencies that

participate in the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI) Uniform Crime Reports

(UCR) indicate that, nationally, only 1,263 hate crimes based on sexual orientation were

reported in 2015 (UCR 2015).

2

Thus, the passage of anti-LGBT hate crime legislation

(Jenness and Grattet 2001; Parris and Scheuerman 2015; Herek 2017) does not necessar-

ily translate into policy enforcement (Dwyer 1990; Grattet and Jenness 2008), providing

a good case study for investigating the conditions under which ongoing social movement

pressure leads to successful implementation of existing policy.

The hate crimes literature has pointed to two broad sources of hate crime occurrence.

First, some criminologists have suggested that hate crime reporting is an outgrowth of

underlying structural variables, such as social disorganization broadly defined (Grattet

and Jenness 2008; Gladfelter, Lantz, and Rubak 2017). Specifically, the occurrence and

reporting of hate crimes may increase due to structural inequality and social isolation,

both of which tend to exacerbate tensions between various social groups (Grattet and

Jenness 2008). A second body of research points to hate crime reporting as an outgrowth

of activist organizations who pressure communities and law enforcement to label acts as

hate crimes (McVeigh, Welch, and Bjarnason 2003; Grattet and Jenness 2008), suggesting

that communities with stronger social movement organization (SMO) presence and

resources will increase the rate of hate crime reporting (Grattet and Jenness 2008). In light

of these complementary explanations, here we investigate to what extent state-level

structural and social movement characteristics affect hate crime policy implementation.

We address this question by focusing on anti-LGBT hate crimes reported to the FBI

in the United States between 1995 and 2008. In doing so, we extend the literature on

hate crime enforcement in multiple ways. First, we examine whether SMO-related fac-

tors known to facilitate policy passage—that is, the strength of LGBT organizations

and businesses (Werum and Winders 2001; Kane 2003; Soule 2004; Agnone 2007; John-

son 2008; Olzak and Soule 2009; Parris and Scheuerman 2015)—can be similarly applied

to policy implementation (see also Haider-Markel 1998). Disentangling the mechanisms

influencing policy passage and implementation can help differentiate symbolic policy

gains from long-term policy impact (Amenta et al. 2010). Second, we extend extant

research by providing a closer examination of the political consequences of social move-

ments, including, but not limited to, the implementation of state policy (McVeigh,

Welch, and Bjarnason 2003; Amenta et al. 2010; Barclay, Jones, and Marshall 2011;

Boutcher 2011). Third, we examine the question of whether anti-LGBT hate crime

reporting can best be explained by the types of structural conditions identified by crimi-

nologists or by the types of conditions identified by social movement scholars. Specifi-

cally, we ask whether the reporting of anti-LGBT hate crimes is higher in states that

have structural conditions conducive to the occurrence of crimes or higher where LGBT

organizations have a stronger presence and are formally included in the political process.

Last, because we examine a specific type of bias crime and relevant factors affecting its

reporting at the state level, this study is uniquely situated to identify how drivers of

LGBT hate crime policy implementation compare to those applied to other studies of

bias crimes at the community, city, or county level (e.g., McVeigh, Welch, and

Bjarnason 2003; King 2007; Grattet and Jenness 2008; Holder 2018), which predominate

in the literature on hate crimes.

Below, we first provide background on why anti-LGBT hate crimes provide an excel-

lent case to study how state-level structural factors (see Grattet and Jenness 2008),

movement resources, and the political context within which SMOs operate may explain

©2019 The Authors

Law & Policy ©2019 University of Denver and Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

32 LAW & POLICY January 2020