Hate Crimes

The Prevalence of Hate Crimes

Prior to the 1990s, before the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) began to gather hate crime data at a national level, a primary source of hate crime statistics consisted of reports issued by advocacy groups such as the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center. Though valuable to researchers, such data were also regarded with suspicion by some legal scholars, who argued that the ADL and other advocacy organizations had a vested interest in reporting inflated numbers (Jacobs and Henry 1996; Jacobs and Potter 1997).

The FBI's effort to collect data on hate-motivated offenses has also had its detractors. Like other offenses covered by the Uniform Crime Reports, hate crimes are voluntarily reported by local jurisdictions to the FBI. Even as late as 1999, there were still many police jurisdictions that simply did not participate in the National Reporting System. For example, the state of Alabama failed to report any hate crimes for the year 1999. At the same time, the percentage of jurisdictions voluntarily reporting hate offenses has gradually increased since the early 1990s. Most of the population of the United States is now covered in nationally reported hate crime statistics. In comparison to the counts taken since 1990 by the FBI, the later hate crime figures have become more representative; however, there is still reason to believe that hate crimes are vastly underestimated. Whether from ignorance, fear of retaliation, or distrust of the police, many victims of hate attacks do not report their victimization to the police.

In 1999, there were only seventeen hate-motivated murders reported to the FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation 2000). On the other hand, some 60 percent of the thousands of hate crimes reported annually were directed not against property but against persons, most [Page 823]of which took the form of intimidation and assaults. The location of hate crime incidents varied, but they seemed to be concentrated in homes, on the streets, and in schools and colleges. Racial bias was the most common basis for committing a hate offense, with anti-black attacks most likely to occur and anti-white attacks in second place. Anti-Jewish and anti-gay offenses were also quite prevalent, followed by anti-Latino and anti-Asian offenses. A wide range of groups were represented among the victims of hate crimes, including people with physical and mental disabilities, bisexuals, Islamics, Protestants, Catholics, and American Indians (Levin 2002).

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