LOSS OF CONTROL
Conventional wisdom holds that the prime suspects in hate crimes are the economic conditions of the area where the crime took place. Not so, says a recent Yale study. They are mainly the work of radical groups motivated by a sense of loss of personal control.
The outbreak of violence by skinheads notwithstanding, if economic conditions were really at the root of hate crime, says political scientist Donald Green, Ph.D., people would have seen more dastardly acts in the areas most stricken by economic woes.
He analyzed data on unemployment and mean income for 100 counties in North Carolina from 1987 to 1991 and compared the figures with the number of bias-related crimes in those counties. Although crime rates increased in areas experiencing economic hardship, their was no increase in crimes motivated by hate or intolerance.
"Times don't have to be hard for the violence to come to the surface," he says. "A far more important motivator is fear of outgroups, fear of loss of control, and the presence of easy targets to lash out against."
