In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

94 A woman standing outside a downtown nightclub is knocked to the ground by a man she does not know. Without saying a word to her, he assaults her and fractures her skull. This man had also verbally and physically assaulted four other women after they had rejected his advances. In the incident above, a jury in California found Billy Dean McCall guilty of one felony assault and four misdemeanor assaults. He was convicted of a gender-bias hate crime for the felony assault in which the woman suffered a fractured skull (T. Perry 2000). Such violence by men against women is not rare. Women are victims of violence every day for the sole reason that they are women. Although problems of inadequate data collection and underreporting continue to plague statistical estimates, experts agree that gender-based crimes occur at staggering rates— especially domestic violence and rape (Carney 2001; Ciraco 2001). Despite the extent of male violence against women, very rarely are acts of such violence considered gender-bias crimes. The gender category of hate crime legislation is seldom utilized; consequently, gender-motivated violence remains marginalized within the hate crime domain. Hate crime legislation has been institutionalized on the federal and state levels, and the gender category— although still contentious—has for the most part been accepted within such legislation. This is demonstrated by the inclusion of the gender category in federal hate crime legislation and the increasing number of states that include gender in their own bias crime statutes. However, despite the growing acceptance of this category, its implementation remains notably rare. Although policymakers have utilized the category as a way to recognize the extent of gender-motivated violence in this country, it continues to face resistance on the enforcement level; consequently, the category has failed as an instrument of social change. Policymakers may have anticipated that the inclusion of the gender category would highlight the inherent biases within gender-based 5 Where Do We Go from Here? Policy Implications and Directions for Future Research Where Do We Go from Here? | 95 crimes, effectively changing how such crimes are handled within the criminal justice system. But because the gender category is rarely used, violence against women is not recognized for what it is—discriminatory acts of violence against women because of their gender. Vago observes that“the extent to which law can provide an effective impetus for social change varies according to the conditions present in a particular situation ” (2003 312). Such conditions include the amount of information available about a piece of legislation, a precise statement of the law so as to prevent multiple interpretations of it, and the responsiveness of enforcement agencies in implementing the law (ibid., 312–13). The case study presented in this book demonstrates that these particular conditions were not present in New Jersey. For instance, despite the fact that gender had been a part of the state’s bias crime statute for over ten years, interviewees were still unsure of how the category fit in the hate crime framework. Investigators and prosecutors were also reluctant to conceptualize gender-based offenses as hate crimes, much less enforce the gender category within the bias crime statute. Thus, the gender category has not been effective in changing the status of gender-motivated violence within the state’s legal system. Moreover, there is often resistance to a law, which affects its ability to serve as an instrument for social change (Vago 2003, 325). This resistance can take many forms and occurs for a variety of reasons. For instance, ideological resistance occurs if the law challenges a prevailing set of beliefs. In addition, a law is resisted if it runs counter to habitual behaviors. Both forms of resistance were apparent in the current study. Interviewees argued that gender-based crimes such as domestic violence and sexual assaults were already addressed by other statutes. Legal actors accustomed to dealing with such crimes through these laws were reluctant to conceptualize gender-based offenses as hate crimes. Perhaps most important, the gender category encountered resistance because the conceptualization of such crimes as bias-motivated offenses contradicts the dominant patriarchal ideology of society. In particular, sexual assaults and domestic violence were not viewed as discriminatory acts of violence against women; thus, they were excluded from the purview of the bias crime statute. Instead, law enforcement officials viewed such violence as motivated by something besides a bias against the female victim. Because our society is dominated by a patriarchal ideology, gender-motivated offenses...

Share