Hate Crimes Against People EXperiencing Homelessness

Hate Crimes Against People Experiencing Homelessness

The June 2001 killing of Hector Robles in Paterson, NJ by a mob of high school boys saturated front pages and evening news reports with its horrid brutality and inexplicable motivation. Hidden from most living rooms, however, were a number of other shocking crimes committed nationwide against homeless people this year. A 22-year-old woman was stabbed almost 15 times and thrown into the Charles River in Cambridge, MA. A man was drenched with gasoline and set on fire in New York City. An army veteran in Ventura, CA, was beaten to death while resting in his sleeping bag.

The term "hate crime" generally conjures up images of cross burnings and lynchings, swastikas on Jewish synagogues, and horrific murders of gays and lesbians. In 1968, the U.S. Congress defined a hate crime as a crime in which the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of their race, color or national origin (Title 18 U.S.C Section 245). The first federal law to combat hate crimes, 18 USC Section 245, passed in 1968; it mandated that the government must prove both that the crime occurred because of a victim's membership in a designated group and because the victim was engaged in certain specified federally-protected activities -- such as serving on a jury, voting, or attending public school. [1]

Hate crimes are commonly called bias-motivated crimes, referring to the prejudice or partiality of the perpetrator against the victim's real or perceived grouping or circumstance. Most hate crimes are committed not by organized hate groups, but by individual citizens who harbor a strong resentment against a certain group of people. Some are "mission offenders," who believe they are on a mission to cleanse the world of a particular evil. Others are "scapegoat offenders," who project their resentment toward the growing economic power of a particular racial or ethnic group through violent actions. Still others are "thrill seekers"-those who take advantage of a vulnerable and disadvantaged group in order to satisfy their own pleasures. [2] Thrill seekers, primarily in their teens, are the most common perpetrators of violence against the homeless population.