Criminal Justice Communicates in a professional manner, consistent with expectations for criminal justice professionals. 

Instructions:1. Fully addresses question or topic. | Applies critical thinking or problem-solving. |
Uses lesson content to support positions, conclusions, or perspectives. Asks questions, assesses further considerations, provides a different point of view, etc.
2. Communicates in a professional manner, consistent with expectations for criminal justice professionals.

case 1:
As a law enforcement officer or private citizen in a city of 100,000 to help prevent hate-motivated behavior the first approach from either side should be educating. Education is the primary step to knowledge, if you don’t understand or acknowledge such behavior exist how can you attempt to prevent it. As the saying goes “Ignorance is bliss”, because if you don’t know about something you don’t worry about it.

From the perspective of a law enforcement officer; I would educate myself about the people I would be coming in contact with on a daily basis and try to understand their lifestyle. Learning about the lifestyle will help to identify relevant information such as demographics, makeup, needs, priorities, and history. Once you’re educated about these things and you build a positive rapport with the community and become an active role model to help people “unlearn” the hate they learned. You will be a source of information to educate fellow officers and lead by example.

From the perspective of a private citizen, prevention of hate motivated behavior is also linked to educating oneself. Living in a community where others practice hate motivated behavior doesn’t mean as an individual you have to participate. Many times people follow what they see others doing, so in a community based on hate behavior as a citizen if you question “why”, that could be the one small question that leads to change or prevention. People don’t always know why they do things, they just do what they learned.

Overall, education is the key to prevention. When you know better, you do better; or at least that’s what we hope.

case 2:
As an officer and private citizen, there are multiple ways I can attempt to prevent the spread of hate-motivated behavior. I can start by understanding what a hate crime is, that it distinguishes criminal behavior motivated by prejudice rather than criminal behavior motivated by lust, jealousy, and greed (pg. 136-137). I believe a lot of prevention comes from understanding. So as an officer and private citizen I would need to understand that people are different and come from different backgrounds. I believe it would help to be aware of where these types of crimes happen most commonly. 32.6% of hate crimes happened in or near homes, 18% happened on highways, roads, and streets, 5.7% in parking lots and 4.1% in houses of warship (pg. 141). To know how to prevent something, we need to know how it started. According to social learning theory, crime and hate is learned through interactions with other people, family, and friends (pg. 143). With the strain theory, people experience a gap between cultural goals like success and wealth and the ways to achieve it. This gap is largest in lower-income groups, where violence against perceived competitors may happen (pg. 142). In communities where racial and ethnic composition is mixed can lead to challenges in group dominance, resulting in violence to defend their ‘territory’ (pg. 142). I would place more attention in these areas. Intergroup conflict is heightened by perceived competition for resources, resulting in violence (pg. 143). With social learning theory, negative ideas of others are learned, so perhaps they can be unlearned. Different groups who have regular contact with each other can potentially reduce the biases and stereotypes (pg. 148). So I believe community resources and supervised events are essential. Knowing how and why people have biased beliefs of others can help me as an officer to prevent the spread of hate behavior. Education is important! I would introduce a team, like the Bias Incident Investigating Unit (BIIU), and the GLBT unit, to help educate people on tolerance, history, understanding, and interpersonal relationships. I would start teaching theses tolerance techniques at a young age, in schools, in areas were hate behavior is high. My unit would communicate with the community to build trust with all groups. I would also have a training guide to help my team of officers understand what a hate crime is and why they happen and where. Unlike the FBI my training guide would be more specific as to whether to count a crime as a hate crime or not (pg. 137). I would need my team to take classes to be regularly updated on the statistics of these crimes.

Riedel, M., & Welsh, W. N. (2016). Criminal violence: Patterns, explanations, and interventions. New York: Oxford University Press.

case 3:
As an officer, a major responsibility is avoiding your own bias, and looking at the situation objectively. As stated in the text, the responding officer may be responsible for determining if the crime was related to bias, and determining if it needs to be brought to the bias unit that has been incorporated into many cities around the nation. In addition to this, officers must make arrests in these cases for laws to be effective, and prosecutors must charge the offender, juries must make a conviction, and the offender must be sentenced (pg. 146). Right now, these laws, as well as federal statutes regarding and surrounding these hate crimes in the United States are rarely enforced (Pg. 147). This causes those committing these crimes to not see them as serious, and allows them to continue their thinking that hate crimes are an acceptable set of acts, and are not punished, especially not as severely as they should be.

Personally, as an individual, as well as being an officer, I would have to help my community in a way to reduce hate crimes and biases against ethnicity, race, gender, or other social groups that are growing and becoming more relevant in today’s society. I would get involved in awareness groups in my society, as well spread awareness to others. Hate crimes cause many deaths, as well as many injuries, both physically and psychologically. This is an issue that needs attention, and the only way it will get the attention it needs is if individuals such as citizens of different societies as well as those in authority (officers, judges, prosecutors, etc.) enforce these laws and take action against hate crimes and biases in the US.