Exemplify Different Types of Crimes

Assignment 1: AC 1.1 Exemplify different types of crimes

Hate Crime

Hate crimes are acts of violence aimed at people based on their lifestyle, who they are or someone’s opinion on what they are. For example, if you’ve been bullied or victimised because of a misunderstanding on your sexuality; this Is an act of hate crime. Hate crime can be targeted at people for various reasons such as: Disability, race/ethnicity, religion and belief, sexual orientation and transgender identity.  These can be committed against the person themselves or their property. Hate crime can involve racism, sexism, and homophobia etc. hate crime can be any criminal or non-criminal crimes such as graffiti, vandalism to a property, name calling, assault or online abuse via social media. Hate crimes offer start small and escalate to larger incidents in the community.

191,000 hate crime incidents involving one or more victims occurred annually. Approximately 44% of hate crimes were reported to the police and most likely to be offenders were men (79%) and strangers (51%). In about half of hate crimes, the victim as threatened verbally or assaulted without an injury or weapon being involved. An estimate of 3% of all violent crimes revealed by victims were seeming to be hate crimes and annually 22,000 household’s experiences vandalism motivated by hate or bias opinions.[pic 1]

The number of hate crimes on average were 190,840 incidents to have happened and 210,430 victimizations per year; however, only 80,760 incidents and 91,630 victimizations were reported to the police. The typical victim is mainly to be bullied on their race and ethnicity/background as this was the most consistent reason on hate crimes.  This shows people aren’t aware of hate crimes or might not even know they’re being victimized as not a lot of incidents have been reported which show a massive gap of how aware people are of the crime.

Most hate crime perpetrators are committed by people who are “average” teenagers or young adults. Studies indicate that the most common profile of a hate crime offender is that of a young, white male who commits the crime amongst a small group of individuals. Factors that seem to influence offenders are normally the crime conducting in small groups, victim being a stranger or the crime is more verbally done rather than physical. Hate crimes are usually committed within groups rather than lone offenders and one factor which enhances hate crimes are the fact that it is much easier to hate on a person who is personally not known and people often offend against strangers as they do not know them individually.

Case study 1: An Asian female was walking home when she was approached by a mother and son who started to shout racial abuse at her, as a result the female was offended and distressed and immediately went home and reported the matter to the police. Police officers figured out that the offenders were neighbours of the female and the incident was further complicated as they realised along with other agencies and authorities that they had already dealt with the victim and the alleged offenders. As a result both the mother and son were arrested and charged with a Racially Aggravated Public order offence.