Barbara Perry Structured Action Theory

To begin to understand why anti-race/ethnicity homicides may be discernible from other types of lethal violence, the current study draws from Messerschmidt’s (1993) theory of structured action, and specifically Barbara Perry’s (2001) extension of this theoretical framework to explain incidents of bias victimization. Structured action theory assumes that individual behavior and social relations cannot be interpreted without first linking people’s actions to the broader socio-structural conditions under which they live (Messerschmidt, 1993). In this framework, interpersonal bias crime and violence is understood by examining how specific cultural norms and situated processes structure social interactions (Messerschmidt, 1993). In the United States,
(for exceptions see Garofalo, 1991). Despite this limitation, it is possible to draw from the broader comparative bias crime literature to better understand the disparate ways in which bias violence is quantitatively dissimilar from more common offenses. One way that bias violence is different from average crimes is that the harms caused by discriminatory crime extend well beyond the immediate victims and their families (McDevitt et al., 2001). Researchers contend that that bias violence incidents undermine the stability of collective racial/ethnic groups (Perry, 2001; Perry & Alvi, 2011; Weinstein, 1992), destabilize neighborhoods (Iganski, 2001, 2003, 2008), and unsettle community solidarity (McDevitt et al., 2001; Perry, 2001; Perry & Alvi, 2011). Also important, the demographic features of bias crime are thought to be distinct from more routine criminality. Previous research indicates that White males who are relatively young are more likely to perpetrate bias-related offenses (Berrill, 1990; Comstock, 1991; Garofalo & Martin, 1993; Harry, 1992; Martin, 1996; Maxwell & Maxwell, 1996; Messner, McHugh, & Felson, 2004), including bias-motivated homicides (Gruenewald, 2012, 2013). In one study, Garofolo (1991) discovered that crimes driven by racial and ethnic bias are more likely to be orchestrated by young men than other,
Rather than attempting to untangle what drives bias offenders to commit violence, they utilized open source data to explore modes of victim selection, by which only observable situational evidence was examined to organize anti-LGBT homicides based on “how, and not why” offenders select victims under various contexts (Gruenewald & Kelley, 2015, p. 1135). Their research uncovered even more diverse patterns of bias crime victimization, including five unique modes of victim selection classified as predatory representative offenses, predatory instrumental offenses, responsive gay bash offenses, responsive undesired romantic or sexual advance offenses, and responsive mistaken identity offenses (Gruenewald & Kelley, 2015; Kelley & Gruenewald, 2015). Importantly, the current study builds from Gruenewald and Kelley’s (2015; Kelley & Gruenewald, 2015) approach to qualitatively categorize anti-race/ethnicity homicide events according to the varied situated circumstances under which they emerge and