THE HOMOGENIZATION AND DIFFERENTIATION OF HATE CRIME LAW IN THE UNITED-STATES, 1978 TO 1995 - INNOVATION AND DIFFUSION IN THE CRIMINALIZATION OF BIGOTRY
R. Grattet et al., THE HOMOGENIZATION AND DIFFERENTIATION OF HATE CRIME LAW IN THE UNITED-STATES, 1978 TO 1995 - INNOVATION AND DIFFUSION IN THE CRIMINALIZATION OF BIGOTRY, American sociological review, 63(2), 1998, pp. 286-307
We view criminalization as a process of institutionalization that invo
lves the diffusion of legal forms and practices. Conventional approach
es to criminalization have been dominated by historical case studies t
hat illuminate the collective action and social structural bases of sh
ifts in crime policy by focusing on the dynamics internal to particula
r polities. Our event history analysis of U.S. states' adoption of hat
e crime laws indicates that criminalization is affected by a state's i
nternal political culture and traditions as well as by its location wi
thin the larger interstate system. Thus, the diffusion of hate crime p
olicies resembles the diffusion pattern of many other policy reforms.
However, detailed analyses of the content of hate crime laws reveal th
at as they diffused the variety of methods of altering the criminal co
de diminished while the domain and complexity of the laws increased Th
ese findings suggest that criminalization, and by extension institutio
nalization, is characterized by countervailing forces: the simultaneou
s homogenization and differentiation of cultural forms. We discuss how
consideration of these processes-especially differentiation-advances
research on diffusion, institutionalization, and criminalization.