NCJ Number
167367
Date Published
1997
Length
12 pages
Annotation
Hate crime is examined with respect to its nature, incidence, and current and potential responses.
Abstract
Most hate crime laws in the United States focus on race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation. The 6,551 police agencies providing full information to the FBI's Hate Crime Statistics program reported 7,587 hate crime incidents for 1993; this number cannot be taken as a measure of the true level of hate crime victimization. The FBI's hate crime reporting is new, experience in documenting hate crimes is limited, and many crucial jurisdictions are not represented in the 1993 data. Analysis of the 7,587 incidents revealed that 62 percent were racially motivated, 11 percent were motivated by the victim's sexual orientation, and 6 percent were motivated by the victim's ethnicity. The most common forms of hate crimes are intimidation and harassment, followed by assault. Hate victimizations tend to consist of confrontational crimes committed in public places by small groups of young offenders who are strangers to their victims against lone victims or pairs of victims who are slightly older than the offenders. The limited available research indicates that the expression of hate motivation as part of a crime adds to the negative effects suffered by individual victims. Penalty enhancements are more common than other responses to hate crimes. However, victim interests might be better served by the development of creative sentencing alternatives, especially for the juveniles who make up a disproportionate share of hate crime offenders. Notes and 34 references