What is Hate Speech? Part 2: Family Resemblances

The issue of hate speech has received significant attention from legal scholars and philosophers alike. But the vast majority of this attention has been focused on presenting and critically evaluating arguments for and against hate speech bans as opposed to the prior task of conceptually analysing the term ‘hate speech’ itself. This two-part article aims to put right that imbalance. It goes beyond legal texts and judgements and beyond the legal concept hate speech in an attempt to understand the general concept hate speech. And it does so using a range of well-known methods of conceptual analysis that are distinctive of analytic philosophy. One of its main aims is to explode the myth that emotions, feelings, or attitudes of hate or hatred are part of the essential nature of hate speech. It also argues that hate speech is best conceived as a family resemblances concept. One important implication is that when looking at the full range of ways of combating hate speech, including but not limited to the use of criminal law, there is every reason to embrace an understanding of hate speech as a heterogeneous collection of expressive phenomena. Another is that it would be unsound to reject hate speech laws on the premise that they are effectively in the business of criminalising emotions, feelings, or attitudes of hate or hatred.     

Initial Findings from a Feasibility Trial Examining the SafeCare Dad to Kids Program with Marginalized Fathers

Few studies have explored the direct impact of behavioral parent training programs on child maltreatment behaviors among marginalized, at-risk fathers. This feasibility study examined SafeCare® Dad to Kids (Dad2K), an augmented version of the evidence-based child maltreatment prevention program SafeCare, to determine the acceptability and initial efficacy of the program for improving father parenting skills and reducing maltreatment risk. Ninety-nine fathers were enrolled in the study and randomized to the SafeCare Dad2K Intervention (n?=?51) or comparison (n?=?48). Intervention fathers participated in 6 home visiting sessions and comparison fathers received parenting materials via mail. All fathers participating in the study completed a baseline and 8-week assessment (post-intervention) of maltreatment behaviors. In addition, intervention fathers completed feasibility and parenting skill measures. A significant main effect emerged indicating decreases for both groups in psychologically aggressive behaviors. No significant group by time findings emerged for child maltreatment behaviors. Father intervention completers endorsed high satisfaction ratings for the program and demonstrated significant improvements in targeted father-child interaction skills. Based on the high rates of acceptability and initial improvement in positive parenting skills, findings demonstrate the feasibility for involving at-risk fathers in behavioral parent training programs targeting child maltreatment prevention.     

The Burglary Boost: A Note on Detecting Contagion Using the Knox Test

Objectives

A large body of literature in quantitative criminology finds that the spatio-temporal clustering of burglary is greater than one would expect from chance alone. This suggests that such crimes may exhibit a “boost” effect, wherein each burglary increases the risk to nearby locations for a short period. In this study, we demonstrate that standard tests for spatio-temporal dependence have difficulty distinguishing between clustering caused by contagion and that caused by changing relative risks. Therefore, any estimates of the boost effect drawn from these tests alone will be upwardly biased.

Methods

We construct an agent-based model to generate simulated burglary data, and explore whether the Knox test can reliably distinguish between contagion (one burglary increases the likelihood of another burglary nearby) and changes in risk (one area gets safer while another gets more dangerous). Incorporating insights from this exercise, we analyze a decade of data on burglary events from Washington, DC.

Results

We find that (1) absent contagion, exogenous changes in relative risk can be sufficient to produce statistically significant Knox ratios, (2) if risk is changing over time, estimated Knox ratios are sensitive to one’s choice of time window, and (3) Knox ratios estimated from Washington, DC burglary data are sensitive to one’s choice of time window, suggesting that long-run changes in relative risk are, in part, driving empirical estimates of burglary’s boost effect.

Conclusions

Researchers testing for contagion in empirical time series should take precautions to distinguish true contagion from exogenous changes in relative risks. Adjusting the time window of analysis is a useful robustness check, and future studies should be supplemented with new approaches like agent-based modeling or spatial econometric methods.

     

The Role of Site Variance in the American Judicature Society Field Study Comparing Simultaneous and Sequential Lineups

Objectives

Police departments often use photo lineups for eyewitness identification purposes. A widely adopted lineup reform designed to reduce eyewitness misidentifications involves switching from the standard simultaneous photo presentation format to a sequential format. These two lineup procedures were recently tested in the American Judicature Society (AJS) field study, which was conducted in four different police jurisdictions. The results from two phases of that investigation reached opposite conclusions as to which lineup procedure is superior, and the purpose of our current investigation was to elucidate the role of site variance in shaping those contrasting conclusions.

Methods

In previous analyses, the field study data were either (1) aggregated across all four study sites or (2) drawn from only one study site (Austin, Texas). Here, we analyze the data separately for the Austin study site, where 69 % of the eyewitnesses were tested, and the other three study sites combined, where 31 % of the eyewitnesses were tested.

Results

The results indicate significant site variance between the Austin and non-Austin study sites. In addition, the results suggest that aggregating the data across sites played a determinative role in creating the apparent disagreement about which lineup procedure is diagnostically superior.

Conclusions

Once large differences across the AJS study sites are taken into consideration, there is no longer any disagreement about which lineup procedure is superior. The simultaneous procedure is diagnostically superior to the sequential procedure, but the sequential procedure sometimes induces more conservative responding (a result that can and often does masquerade as diagnostic superiority).

     

THE CASCADING EFFECTS OF ADOLESCENT GANG INVOLVEMENT ACROSS THE LIFE COURSE*

The short‐run deleterious effects of gang involvement during adolescence have been well researched. However, surprisingly little empirical attention has been devoted to understanding how gang involvement in adolescence influences life chances and criminal behavior in adulthood. Drawing on the life‐course perspective, this study argues that gang involvement will lead to precocious transitions that, in turn, will have adverse consequences on the fulfillment of adulthood roles and statuses in the economic and family spheres. Moreover, problems fulfilling these conventional roles are hypothesized then to lead to sustained involvement in criminal behavior in adulthood. Using data from a sample of males from the Rochester Youth Development Study, results from structural equation models support the indirect link between gang membership and noncriminal and criminal outcomes in adulthood. Specifically, gang involvement leads to an increase in the number of precocious transitions experienced that result in both economic hardship and family problems in adulthood. These failures in the economic and family realms, in turn, contribute to involvement in street crime and/or arrest in adulthood. Implications for the criminal desistance process are discussed.