THE HOMOGENIZATION AND DIFFERENTIATION OF HATE CRIME LAW IN THE UNITED-STATES, 1978 TO 1995 - INNOVATION AND DIFFUSION IN THE CRIMINALIZATION OF BIGOTRY

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.