Type:	Journal Article
Title:	Prosecutorial perspectives on gender-bias hate crimes
Other Titles:	Violence against women
Authors:	McPhail, Beverly A DiNitto, Diana M
Keywords:	Policy;Criminal justice responses
Year:	2005
Publisher:	Sage Publications
Citation:	11 (9), September 2005
Notes:	This article looks at a US study to assess prosecutors’ knowledge of gender-bias hate crimes and their willingness to charge violence against women as a hate crime. It outlines the historical development of the initial exclusion, then inclusion of gender as a status category in hate crime. It finds a lack of published research findings on the topic of prosecutors and hate crime policy in the legal or social science literature. Qualitative interviews with a purposive sample of prosecutors from Texas were conducted. The authors report that prosecutors are insufficiently informed about gender-bias hate crimes, and prosecutors attribute violence against women to motivations of power and control instead of hate. Using a hate crime approach tends to politicise crimes. Rather than look at each case as unique and individual, hate crimes look at the harm done to a group and place the crime within a historical context of group discrimination and oppression. The prosecutors do not view violence against women within this framework. It discusses one of the benefits of hate crime prosecution as the penalty enhancement. However, enhanced penalties are beneficial when the problem is insufficient punishment but not when the problem is ensuring the case to be charged in the first place. The major difficulty in addressing violence against women is the problem of lack of charging in the first place. It also discusses the benefits of viewing violence against women through a hate crime framework, gender as a second-class status, and issues of invisibility of intersecting oppressions. Some of the benefits discussed include: recognition of group-based hate rather than the individualised and personalised approach in the violence against women model; new legal remedies; shifting attention away from the victim and onto the perpetrators’ actions; and re-framing questions to ‘why do they target women’. Recommendations for addressing gender-bias hate crimes are provided.
URI:	https://anrows.intersearch.com.au/anrowsjspui/handle/1/16394
ISSN:	1077-8012
Appears in Collections:	Journal Articles

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