Assessing the public's demand for hate crime penalties

In this article, we analyze responses from a nationally representative sample of American adults to determine public attitudes toward punishment for hate crimes. While attitudinal polls find strong support for hate crime laws, criminological research provides reasons to believe that this support may be weaker than assumed. Our findings suggest that, while there is minimal public support for harsher penalties for offenders who commit hate crimes, attitudes toward punishment, treatment, and minority rights are predictive of preferences for differential treatment of hate crime offenders. We discuss possible implications of these results in our conclusion.