Hate Crimes

Hate crimes are criminal actions intended to harm or intimidate people because of their race, ethnicity sexual orientation, religion or other minority group status. Hate crimes are also referred to as bias crimes.

The problem of hate crimes has attracted increasing research attention since the 1980’s. This is especially true for criminologists and law enforcement personnel who focus on documenting the prevalence of the problem and formulating responses to it. In researching hate crimes I found some very interesting statistics that I did not know about:

• Ordinary crimes are generally committed by people that are familiar with the victims.

• Hate crimes are committed by strangers, and most perpetrators are under the age of 20.

• As of September of 2001 there were 7 states that did not have hate crime laws.

A. Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, S. Carolina and Wyoming.

• 20 states have laws that don’t include sexual orientation as a protected group

• On 7/4/00, Kentucky was the latest state to have a hate crime bill signed into law

• The original 1969 federal hate crime law only covered race, color, religion, and national origin. It did not include sexual orientation, gender, or disability status, and only applied if the victim was engaged in a federally protected activity.

Law makers have passed legislation to encourage data collection efforts and also attached stiffer penalties to hate crimes at both state and federal levels. In 1997, President Bill Clinton held a White House Conference on Hate Crimes. During this conference, he announced a number of initiatives, including his support for expanded coverage of hate crimes in federal legislation and his decision to include questions about hate crimes in the National Crime Victimization Survey. When the Hate Crimes Act of 2000 was enacted, the New York State Legislature offered different arguments for hate crime legislation. They specifically found that:

“Hate crimes do more than threaten the safety and welfare of all citizens. They inflict on victims incalculable physical and emotional damage and tear at the very fabric of free society. Crimes motivated by invidious hatred toward particular groups not only harm individual victims but send a powerful message of intolerance and discrimination to all members of the group to which the victim belongs. Hate crimes can and do intimidate and disrupt entire communities and vitiate the civility that is essential to healthy democratic processes. In a democratic society, citizens cannot be required to approve of the beliefs and practices of others, but must never commit criminal acts on account of them. Current law does not adequately recognize the harm to public order and individual