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Hate crimes at school and it's prevention

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Hate crimes at school and it's prevention

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More than 10 percent of the 7,175 hate-bias incidents reported by law enforcement in 2017 occurred at schools and universities(Pbs.org)

In recent years, the rise of hate crimes is noticeable. Videos of students being taunted for their ethnicity and skin color have surfaced from schools all over the country

Young students easily pick up hate propaganda from the media or other external sources.

Preventing hate crimes from teaching students to reject hate. A school district in California promoted diversity when teachers came in to school wearing "Black Lives Matter" t shirts (pbs.org)

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1. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009

Named after two victims of hate crimes

Offers funding for states to investigate and prosecute hate crimes

introduced federal criminalization of causing bodliy harm to someone  because of the religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability of the victim

2. A large amount of hate crimes aren't reported. Hate crimes are self reported by law enforcement agencies. These agencies often struggle to draw the line between hate crimes and other crimes.

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1. Thrill seeking

offenders motive is the "excitement"

offender believes society will not care about their actions

2  . Defensive

offender believes they're protecting the community from invaders

believes they're doing a service to the community

3. Retaliatory

Crimes are retaliation for personal issues, other hate crimes, terrorist attacks (cnn)

4. Mission Offenders

Use religion to justify their hate

believe their actions are in the name of spirituality

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1. Prosecutors & Judges

Both judges and prosecutors face potentially powerful political costs.

Both also face no direct (budgetary) consequences for their decisions.

2. Support for Private Prisons and Capitalizing on Mass Incarceration

In the 1980s, private prisons were introduced where they would receive funding from government contracts based on total number of inmates and average length of time served; moreover, the longer the sentence and the larger the number of prisoners there are can mean more funding.

Support for private business still exists today and claim privatizing prisons is better.

There has been a gradual increase in their number.

While supporters of private prisons promote the idea that governments can save money through privatization, the evidence is mixed at best—in fact, private prisons may in some instances cost more than governmental ones. These private prisons have also been linked to numerous cases of violence and atrocious conditions (ACLU).

3. Lack of Awareness and Misconceptions

There are public misconceptions about who goes to prison. The media and public officials have led the public to believe in viscious, street criminals with specific characteristics which menace innocent citizens.

There is a strong following for the argument that "more incarceration reduces crime" which is inconsistent and proven to be false.

4. Failure to control other factors known to be associated with crime rates

This includes demographics, the economy, and other socioeconomic indicators.

Mass incarceration was created through decades-long policy shifts at the national, state, and local level. Ending it will require policies just as far-reaching (Cullen).

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Prison population began to grow in the 1970s, a population growth due to politics and President Nixon’s declaration of a “war on drugs”.

Politicians from both parties used fear and thinly veiled racial rhetoric to push increasingly punitive policies

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What does the phrase “mass incarceration” mean?

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What does the phrase “mass incarceration” mean?

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It refers to the unique way the U.S. has locked up a vast population in federal and state prisons, as well as local jails.

The United States imprisons more people than any other country in the world, and a disproportionate number of those prisoners are Black—a third of American prisoners are Black to be exact.

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Here, every aspect of the punishment system became tougher:

Life without parole and death penalties for young people

Length detention before trial

Long sentences for minor charges

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The beginning of America's peniteniary sytem:

Eastern State Penitentiary was part of the movement that laid the foundation for an approach to systematic imprisonment which created the conditions for the mass incarceration problem.

Founded by Quakers, they believed that the purpose of punishment was penance.

Until that point, most American prisons were just holding cells packed with men, women, even children - people convicted of everything from petty crimes to murder.

The creators of Eastern State sought to make a prison that was more humane, that would move prisoners into individual cells, giving them time to reflect, work and read the Bible. Penitentiaries were supposed to heal people.

Ultimately, this did not work for other intersectional reasons but nonetheless led government policy makers to believe that rehabilitation had been an expensive failure that led to higher crime rates.

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/answer-sheet/wp/2016/08/18/we-can-no-longer-teach-a-whitewashed-history/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/05/23/were-whitewashing-the-history-of-our-founding-its-fueling-problems-today/

https://www.npr.org/2018/08/09/634991713/lies-my-teacher-told-me-and-how-american-history-can-be-used-as-a-weapon
https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/165479.pdf
https://www.pbs.org/newshour/education/how-teachers-are-trying-to-stop-the-spread-of-hate
https://tcf.org/content/commentary/diversity-schools-must-include-curriculum/?session=1
https://www2.ed.gov/offices/OCR/archives/Harassment/fundamentals1.html
https://www.brennancenter.org/our-work/analysis-opinion/history-mass-incarceration

https://www.npr.org/transcripts/751126384
https://www.justice.gov/crt/matthew-shepard-and-james-byrd-jr-hate-crimes-prevention-act-2009-0
https://www.aclu.org/issues/smart-justice/mass-incarceration
https://www.cnn.com/2017/06/02/us/who-commits-hate-crimes/index.html
Clear, Todd R., and Natasha A. Frost. The Punishment Imperative: The Rise and Failure of Mass Incarceration in America. NYU Press, 2014. JSTOR,
www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt9qg1b2.
Austin, James, and John Keith Irwin. It's About Time: America's Imprisonment Binge. Wadsworth, 2012.
Mauer, Marc, and Sabrina Jones. Race to Incarcerate: A Graphic Retelling. New Press, 2006.
https://www.apa.org/advocacy/interpersonal-violence/hate-crimes
https://pulitzercenter.org/lesson-plan-grouping/1619-project-curriculum
https://www.tolerance.org/classroom-resources/tolerance-lessons/reflection-whats-your-frame
https://rides.gse.harvard.edu/files/gse-rides/files/white_paper_-_curriculum.pdf?m=1527628391
https://education.cu-portland.edu/blog/classroom-resources/teaching-social-justice/

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In many American classrooms, students are not taught to think critically about history as they are in other subjects. Instead, they are taught history in a very factual and undeniable way. In actuality, students should rethink events like the dropping of atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that killed around 200,00 Japanese people, and consider the implications of such a tactic. Allowing for debate and critically responding to difficult questions is another aspect of education that students should be exposed to. Critical thinking is an important aspect of the growth of a student and the classroom should be the one space a student can do so.

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In many classrooms, an inclusive and accurate history of the founding of the United States and various historical events is often not found. The truth is often hidden and overpowered by an American "victory." The legacy of historical figures like the Founding Fathers is often protected by schools and textbooks, not including the aspects of their actions and lives that were either racist or unequal. People of color that positively contributed to American history are often not named, and figures like Christopher Columbus continue to be celebrated for their "heroic" actions and peaceful interactions with Native Americans.

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Generally, conversations about race and social class are not implemented in the curriculum. When they are, teachers and school districts tend to teach a "colorblind" approach that ignores race and racial issues in history, instead of acknowledging the racial and social differences that exist and helping students have conversations about such topics. To create a less racially-biased society, students need a safe space to have a dialogue about race, be clear of what it is, and understand that due to racism in society, people have different experiences.

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The federal government does not have much control over the curriculum for public schools. So, every state has its own education department that has control over the curriculum requirements, school programs, and finances. Within state departments, local school districts and school boards are in charge of the specific curriculum that is taught in the classroom.

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This project will develop this curricula to start at the beginning of a student's middle school and conclude when they graduate high school.

What this means that their education in this curriculum will be gradual and sequential. Middle school will begin lesson activities and themes that will help develop a collaborative learning environment in a classroom as well as encourage the students to think critically for themselves. Activities such as the "FRAME" activity will be implemented during the early stages of this curriculum to serve as a foundation for difficult conversations ahead and also can serve as a refresher-exercise later on should conversations turn destructive rather than difficult.

Students will move on to learning previously erased histories towards the latter part of their middle school career and into high school. The curriculum will address topics such as the effects on modern society that slavery still imposes as well as ways to approach dismantling these effects and systems.

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The three key problems that we have identified in the education system in the U.S that leads to unnaturally high mass incarceration rates as well as disproportionate rates of incarceration between different communities are as follows:
- History curricula are white-washed
-Teaching methods are often colorblind
-Students are taught histories with no space or encouragement of critical thinking.

Our education project will aim to develop a curriculum that directly targets these problem areas. The curriculum will develop key concepts of critical race theory, social justice, community-centered learning and activities that will prompt students to examine their identities and biases in relation to history and present society.

The 1619 Project by the New York Times is a series of critical essays and other forms of writing that re-examines America's history through the lens of racism. It shifts the focus from 1779, the year many still view as America's birth year, onto 1619 as the actual moment America started as 1619 marks the year that a slaves were first transported to the U.S. Along with their long-running series, the New York Times also collaborated with the Pulitzer Center to design a curriculum for schools to teach this history, a history that is often white-washed and erased. We believe the learning aids, curriculum guides and activities from this resource will help start to erase the white-washing of our history curricula. (https://pulitzercenter.org/lesson-plan-grouping/1619-project-curriculum)

When racial histories are taught in classes today, most teachers utilize a "colorblind" approach. In most cases, this is to avoid difficult conversations or in the name of making sure that no student in the classroom feels singled out or different from others based on their ethnicity, race or community. While this is a good goal, it also means that students lack the ability to dissect their own identities and senses of community with respect to their own histories and their classmates. Nurturing these abilities early in students are important if non-white-washed histories are indeed to be taught in classrooms. To that end, including activities and lesson-plans about social identities in early years can be vital. Activities can look like the this one from Teaching Tolerance that asks students to "FRAME" themselves by reflecting on their individual cultures and identities and what conversations these reflections bring up when their "FRAMES" are compared to their fellow classmates'.

Ideally, such activities will foster a classroom built on a foundation of co-learning as opposed to rivalry and competition. Competition can be healthy in certain doses but an environment that pits students against in every aspect for a majority of their day, spent at school, does not foster a community overall that will see the value in supporting one another. We promote learning environments that don't perpetuate the image that learning is an achievement only available to a few but that it is an outcome of everyone working together.

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In the United States, history is a well-debated topic among professionals. There is large variation between schools in terms of what is taught and how it is taught. Not only is history a subject that is often whitewashed and glossed-over, topics of race and social inequalities generally do not enter the classroom.

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Are an extreme form of prejudice, made more likely in the context of social and political change.(APA)

Can lead to dehumanization of certain groups

Could lead to "targeted aggression"

motivated by bias towards Religion,sexual orientation, Gender Identity, Disability, Gender

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United States

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We have developed a curriculum that changes the history that is taught in public schools to focus on the inclusive teaching of Native Americans, African Americans, Asians, Immigrants, etc. starting in middle school and continuing into high school.
This curriculum will:

Teach students their rights as citizens

Teach the history of marginalized groups and their experiences

Educate students on mass incarceration and why it is a major issue in the United States

Teach about race (as a social construct), ethnicity, and white privilege through interactive and age-appropriate activities and units (like the one below!)