ABSTRACT
AN AFRICAN AMERICAN MAN is dragged to his death behind a pickup truck in Jasper, Texas. A young gay college student is beaten and left to die draped on a fence in Laramie, Wyoming. Four schoolgirls and their female teacher are shot to death by two male classmates at Westside Middle School in Jonesboro, Arkansas. Each of these horrific murders left the country first reeling and then debating the causes and solutions to such violence. However, the three crimes were discussed in very different ways. The first two crimes are widely regarded as hate crimes and led to a national discussion on racism and homophobia, respectively. However, Jenness and Grattet (2001) noted the latter crime was treated very differently from the others.
In contrast to these two incidents, the murder of four young girls in a Jonesboro, Arkansas schoolyard in March of 1998 generally has not been viewed as a hate crime, despite the revelation that the young boys in custody for the killings sought to shoot girls because it was girls that angered them. That is, they selected their victims on the basis of gender. Time Magazine (Labi, 1998) referred to it as a “youth crime” and Newsweek (McCormick, 1998) called it a “schoolyard crime.” Because of this framing, the incident triggered a different set of legal and policy discussions, most often in terms of school violence and the debate over gun control. (p. 7)
