Hate crime

SIGNIFICANCE: Hate crime is not new, but it has only been since the late decades of the twentieth century that it has received extensive scholarly and legal attention. Studying and preventing hate crime has proved to be a challenging task.

In 1968, Congress passed an expansion of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that, among other provisions, made it a federally prosecutable crime to interfere or attempt to interfere with anyone engaged in certain federally protected activities, such as voting or attending school, on the basis of that person's "race, color, religion or national origin." It was the first modern hate-crime legislation in the United States. A decade later, states began to follow suit, starting with California, which enacted a statute in 1978 that increased penalties for murder committed due to prejudice against the victim on the basis of one of those same four characteristics

Such crimes came to be known as hate crimes or bias crimes. Although these laws differed considerably from jurisdiction to jurisdiction, most of them worked by adding additional penalties when offenders chose their victims because of their membership, or presumed membership, in certain racial, ethnic, or religious groups. Sexual orientation was not added to any state's hate-crime statute until 1984, when California once again became the first state to do so. By the end of the twentieth century, nearly every state had some form of hate-crime law, as did many nations. The US federal government also passed a law requiring the Department of Justice to collect hate-crime data from local law-enforcement agencies.

Proponents of hate-crime laws argue that special legislation is needed for several reasons. Previously existing laws, such as those in some states that prohibited desecrating cemeteries and places of worship, covered only a small proportion of bias-motivated crime. Many people and groups believed that the frequency of hate crimes was increasing. Furthermore, it was argued, hate crimes are worse than "ordinary" crimes because they have a greater impact on victims and communities.

Hate-crime laws have been challenged on a number of constitutional grounds. The US Supreme Court has ruled on them in such cases as R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul (1992), Wisconsin v. Mitchell (1993), and Virginia v. Black (2003). These rulings have made it permissible to punish offenders when their crimes are motivated by their victims’ group membership. Moreover, bias may be considered as an aggravating circumstance in death penalty cases. However, laws that are too broadly worded or content based, as in R.A.V. v. City of St. Paul, or seek to punish expressions of bias such as cross burning, as in Virginia v. Black, must be drafted carefully so as to avoid infringing on First Amendment rights, as the laws in these two cases were deemed to have done.

Aside from the constitutional issues, the other major debate concerning hate crimes has centered on what kind of groups to include within the protection of the laws. All hate-crime statutes include race, religion, and ethnicity, but other categories have proved to be more controversial. Many hate-crime laws originally did not cover crimes on the basis of sexual orientation, even though the LGBTQ population is frequently targeted. Lawmakers have also been split as to whether they include gender, gender identity, or disability.

With increasing attention to hate crimes in the 2000s, support grew for broadening the types of bias covered. In October 2009, Congress passed the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which expanded federal hate-crime statutes to also apply to crimes committed based on gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, or disability, whether actual or perceived. Previously, federal statute had only covered race, color, religion, national origin, and ethnicity. The act also lifted the requirement that the victim be engaged in a protected activity at the time of the crime, making hate crimes federally prosecutable regardless of what the victim was doing at the time. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) increased the scope of its religious bias category for reporting hate crimes in 2013, adding victimization subcategories for several groups including Mormons, Hindus, and Jehovah's Witnesses. In 2021, in response to the rise in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic, President Joe Biden signed the COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act. The legislation included new requirements for states to review hate crimes related to COVID-19 and increased spending on training and data collection of hate crimes.

Police and Hate Crimes

It has proven to be difficult to enforce hate-crime laws effectively. Research has shown that only around one-half of these crimes are actually reported to police. This is due to a number of factors, including victims’ fears and lack of understanding of the law, as well as poor relations between some communities and their police. Attempts have been made to improve police handling of hate crimes. Some states, such as Illinois and Massachusetts, require their police academies to include training on hate crimes. Many jurisdictions have created special bias-crime units, although the effectiveness of these units varies widely.

Despite these efforts, arrests for hate crimes remain uncommon, and successful prosecutions are even rarer. This is because convicting offenders on hate-crime charges require proving their biased motive beyond a reasonable doubt, which is often difficult. Even California, which has the largest number of reported hate crimes in the nation, only a small fraction of cases end in hate-crime convictions. For example, of 863 events reported in 2013—almost 15 percent of the national total—only 68 alleged offenders, or 7.8 percent, were convicted of a hate crime.

The Impact of Hate Crimes

The most common victims of hate crimes in virtually every jurisdiction are African Americans. Jewish people and members of the LGBTQ community are also frequent targets. However, members of virtually every ethnic group experience hate crimes to some extent. Homicides are rarely connected with hate crimes, although they tend to garner media attention. Much more common are assaults and vandalism.

It is difficult to assess the full impact of hate crimes on victims and communities. Only a handful of studies have carefully examined whether hate-crime victims were more psychologically damaged than victims of what are considered "ordinary" crimes. The studies do suggest that hate crimes might have more harmful or longer-lasting effects in some cases, but more research must be done before firm conclusions can be drawn.

Even fewer studies have looked at the impact of hate crimes on communities at large. Certainly some of the more egregious incidents have received extensive media attention. These have included the killing of gay college student Matthew Shepard in Wyoming, the dragging murder of James Byrd in Texas, and the murder of transgender teenager Gwen Araujo in California. The term "hate crime" is certainly one with which most members of the public have become familiar. Whether these crimes have a greater ripple effect than other kinds of crimes, however, is unknown.

Increased public attention to hate crimes in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries led to the popular belief that the number of hate crimes in the United States was increasing. Some events have certainly led to an increase in hate crime against certain people, such as a rise in crimes against Muslims after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. However, according to data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the overall number of hate crimes reported to the police tended to remain relatively constant over this period, with approximately 0.7 violent hate crimes per 1,000 people age twelve and older taking place each year between 2004 and 2015. This number, amounting to about 250,000 hate crimes per year, is thought to be more realistic than officially reported hate crime statistics compiled by the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) system, which has been criticized for underrepresenting hate crimes due to not accounting for unreported incidents (estimated to be about half of all hate crimes) and poor coordination with various law enforcement agencies. Still, advocacy organizations such as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) have suggested that even the Bureau of Labor Statistics numbers obscure the true extent of hate crimes.

Additionally, after 2015 data did begin to show a statistical increase in hate crimes in the United States, especially against Muslims but also against Jewish people and the LGBTQ community. This was particularly apparent in 2016, when many commentators suggested that the racially charged rhetoric of Donald Trump during his ultimately successful presidential campaign appeared to embolden White supremacists and other hate-crime perpetrators. A study by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism found that the incidence of hate crimes in several major US cities rose by over 20 percent in 2016. Furthermore, the SPLC found that 37 percent of bias incidents it documented during the first several weeks following the 2016 election included direct reference to Trump or his well-known comments or slogans. The election was found to have generated the second-greatest spike in hate crimes since 1992 (when the FBI first began compiling such data), after only the 9/11 attacks. In 2019, the FBI reported 7,103 single-bias incidents; of those, 57.6 percent were racially or ethnicity motivated, 20.1 percent were motivated by religion, and 16.7 percent were motivated by sexual orientation. The following year, the FBI reported the highest number of reported hate-crime incidents since 2008, with 7,759 reported incidents in 2020. Between 2019 and 2020, hate-crime incidents targeting Black people increased the most, rising from 1,972 in 2019 to 2,755 in 2020. Anti-Asian hate crimes also reached record levels in the US in 2020 and 2021, as people associated the COVID-19 pandemic with those from China, where the virus was first reported.

Organized Hate

When many people think of hate crime, the first image that leaps to mind is that of organized hate groups, such as the Ku Klux Klan and other White-supremacist bodies. The numbers of these groups vary from year to year. The Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that 1,430 hate groups were active in the United States in 2023.

Another factor that tends to vary over time is the types of groups that are active. There are many different branches of organized hate in the United States. The oldest of these is the Ku Klux Klan, which has existed in various incarnations since the Civil War. At the start of the twenty-first century, there were actually numerous Klan organizations, many of which were in conflict with one another. Other types of hate groups that remain active include racist skinheads, neo-Nazis, militias and extremist patriot groups, and White-nationalist organizations. There are also a smaller number of nonwhite extremist groups, such as Black nationalists and Jewish extremists.

It is difficult for law-enforcement agencies to track hate groups for several reasons. Group memberships and leaders tend to be fluid, and the groups tend to form and dissolve quickly. By the beginning of the twenty-first century, many of these groups had abandoned their traditional military-style uniforms and were attempting to appear less extremist and more mainstream. Furthermore, in part to avoid legal liability for the acts of their members, many groups began officially disclaiming criminal acts. Some even claimed to be "love" groups rather than hate groups. When their members do commit violent acts, the groups with which they are affiliated typically claim to have nothing to do with the crimes. Some hate-group leaders have also encouraged "lone wolf activism," telling their followers to act as individuals or in small cells rather than in large groups. As with hate crimes in general, the controversial 2016 US presidential election was linked to a rise in the visibility and influence of organized hate groups, particularly White supremacist groups. Many such groups openly supported Donald Trump, who was often criticized for not renouncing them more forcefully.

Another law-enforcement difficulty in dealing with hate groups is that everyone in the United States is protected by the First Amendment, which guarantees citizens the freedom to join organizations—even hate groups—and to create, distribute, and possess bias-filled literature or symbols, so long as no criminal acts are committed. In this way hate speech is differentiated from hate crime.

The United States probably has a greater diversity of hate groups than any other nation, but other countries have their own hate groups as well. Around the turn of the twenty-first century, hate groups in the United States were increasing their ties to groups abroad. This trend has been facilitated by the growing ease of communication on the internet. Although the content of some hate groups' websites is illegal in other countries, most are protected in the United States by the First Amendment. For this reason, foreign hate groups often use American internet service providers. These international ties further complicate law enforcement, both in the United States and abroad. Another complication is the often-thin line between hate crimes and terrorism .

It is unclear what the full impact of organized hate groups is on hate crime in general. Most people who commit hate crimes do not belong to such groups, but it is possible that the groups’ rhetoric and literature may motivate unaffiliated people to commit hate crimes.

Combating Hate Crimes

Hate-crime laws are not the only method that has been developed to combat hate crimes. In some communities, task forces and other organizations have been created to improve hate-crime responses and to improve communications among community groups and government agencies. These organizations typically involve representatives from law enforcement, government prosecutors, educational institutions, and other community-based groups.

Many organizations make fighting hate crimes a primary part of their mission. Some are large, such as the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, Black Lives Matter, and the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Others are grassroots groups, sometimes run by as few as one or two volunteers. In addition to tracking hate groups and lobbying for hate-crime legislation, these groups’ activities have included educating young people, adults, and police officers; victims’ advocacy; and counseling and treatment of offenders.

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