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Article 1:
Iganski, P., & Lagou, S. (2015). Hate Crimes Hurt Some More Than Others Implications for the Just Sentencing of Offenders. Journal of interpersonal violence, 30(10), 1696-1718.

Abstract:
An accumulation of research evidence indicates that hate crimes are more serious than similar but otherwise motivated crimes in respect of the greater post-victimization distress for victims. Such evidence has been used by advocates of hate crime laws to justify greater penalties for hate crime offenders. However, in focusing on the commonalities of the post-victimization impacts inflicted by hate crimes, the research evidence to date has obscured the diversity of reactions between victims. Consequently, this article expands the evidence by illuminating the variation in reported victim impacts. The analysis presented uses data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales on racially motivated crime and reveals that not all victims report being affected by hate crime, not all victims are affected the same way, and some victims of racially motivated crime report less of an emotional impact than some victims of equivalent but otherwise motivated crimes. It is reasoned that in any individual case of hate crime the motivating sentiments of the offender provide an unreliable indicator of the harms inflicted on the victim. Therefore, a blanket uplift in penalty in every case which rests on the offender’s motivations cannot be justified if the justification for sentence uplift is to give offenders their just deserts for the harms they inflict. Instead, the justification must rest on the culpability of the offender for the harms they may or may not actually inflict. Just as there is variation in victim impacts, there will be variation in offender culpability: Discretion and flexibility in sentencing is therefore necessary to ensure justice for offenders.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. In reference to Table 6, identify a significant (p<.05) variable.  
2. What is the standard error for this variable?
3. What does this standard error mean?

Article 2:
Mullins, C. W., & Young, J. K. (2010). Cultures of violence and acts of terror: Applying a legitimation–habituation model to terrorism. Crime & Delinquency.

Abstract:
Although uniquely positioned to provide insight into the nature and dynamics of terrorism, overall the field of criminology has seen few empirically focused analyses of this form of political violence. This article seeks to add to the understanding of terror through an exploration of how general levels of violence within a given society influence the probability of political dissidents within that society resorting to terror as a form of political action. Drawing on the legitimation–habituation thesis, the authors explore whether general levels of legitimate and illegitimate violence within a society predict terrorist violence (both internal and external in direction) within that society. To do so, the authors use zero-inflated negative binomial regression models to perform time series cross-sectional analysis on predictors of terrorist events from the Global Terrorism Database. The authors find support for their core hypothesis and provide a discussion of the implications for the findings within their data and for future criminological research on terrorism.

Questions that apply to this article:

1. Identify two of the research hypotheses and indicate whether they are nondirectional or directional.
2. Compare the standard errors provided in Tables 2 and 3. What accounts for the discrepancies between the two?
3. According to the authors, what was their strongest finding?