Answered>Order 20913

Write 9 page essay on the topic Introducing Criminological Research.

Download file to see previous pages…

837). In the year 2000 alone, the FBI Hate Crime Data Collection Program received reports from 11,690 law enforcement agencies (in 48 states and the District of Columbia), representing nearly 85 percent of the U.S. population. The FBI offered this caution in its annual report: “The reports from these agencies are insufficient to allow a valid national or regional measure of the volume and types of crimes motivated by hate. they offer perspectives on the general nature of hate crime occurrence.”

As the world witnessed the outpour of studies regarding hate crimes, between 1980s and 1990s, there are still much of the area that remains to be unexplored. These small pieces of empirical research can bring about seemingly large shifts to know the core of how hate crimes are committed. For instance, the popular and early image of hate crime tended to portray it as a form of ‘stranger danger’, i.e. a random act, involving a perpetrator and victim who are complete strangers to each other. As many empirical studies have shown, this image has been effectively challenged. Thus, the goal of Gail Mason’s article entitled “Hate Crime and the Image of a Stranger” (1996) is primarily to contribute in that aspect of research by examining the nature of the relationship between victim and perpetrator in both racist and homophobic harassment through a presentation of the results attained during a study into the complaints of racial and homophobic harassment recorded by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) in 2001.

With such contribution to this knowledge of hate crime through the profiling of characteristics-both similarities and differences-of the official of complaints, it clearly accounted for racial and homophobic harassment, as recorded by the MPS. Moreover, a scrutiny of relationships have also been formulated in the context of other variables, such as the location of the alleged incidents, a number of complexities emerge regarding the way in which this relationship is understood by victims and, in turn, defined by this research. As Mason (1996) reminded readers that the research in this area needs to be cognisant not only of where the line is drawn, between perpetrators who are strangers to the victim and perpetrators who are known to the victim, but also seeking how this line is drawn. Furthermore, this study seeks to answer questions like: If a perpetrator is recognized by a victim as someone who is familiar or local to his/her area of residence or work, does this necessarily mean that the perpetrator is known to the victim Or, can a perpetrator be both familiar and a stranger at the same time

Although this study has admittedly pondered on the ambiguities of the relationship between the victim and the perpetrator of hate crime, with deeper research digging into the heart of the problem, more questions will be unraveled. Or, as knowledge of some aspects of hate crime becomes enriched and more certain, further nuances and ambiguities are inevitably revealed (Mason 2005, p. 837).

B.