The federal government's definition of hate crimes-and its annual reports on total reported incidents-paint only a partial portrait of the problem.
The
crimes:
The Hate Crime Statistics Act defines hate crimes as acts in which individuals are victimized because of their "race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity." This definition fails to convey a deeper sense of the severity of hate crimes or their impact on individual victims, their families and communities, and our country. Nor does it address hate crimes against women simply because they are women. The definition in the federal Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act of 1994, includes women and persons with disabilities. In this statute, hate crimes are those in which "the defendant intentionally selects a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that is the object of the crime, because of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, gender, disability, or sexual orientation of any person."
In 1993, the Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Wisconsin's hate crime statute, which enhances the sentence of crimes in which the perpetrator "intentionally selects" the victim "because of" his or her characteristics, Wisconsin v. Mitchell, 113 S. Ct. 2194 (1993). The Wisconsin law was carefully written not to punish a person's prejudicial opinions, but rather to punish criminal intent and conduct.
Hate crimes are much more likely than other crimes to be acts of brutal violence. In comparison to other crimes, targets of hate violence are singled out because of their membership in a social group. Perpetrators are more likely to be marauding groups of predators looking for targets for their hatred. However, they can also be acquaintances, intimate partners or family members.7 Because the intention is to hurt, maim, or kill, hate-motivated crimes are five times as likely as other crimes to involve assault. And these assaults are twice as likely as other assaults to cause injury and to result in hospitalization.8
Thus, the individual victim of a hate crime is more likely to be severely injured in body, and in spirit as well, than the victim of an ordinary offense. Unlike someone who is robbed of a wallet, someone who is attacked for no reason except their membership in a targeted class is more likely to be beaten out of sheer cruelty. And-while crime victims often ask, "Why me?"-the answers are perhaps more hurtful for victims of hate crimes. Victims of hate crimes experience psychic pain regardless of the motivation of the crime. However, it is one thing to be victimized for walking down a deserted street or wearing an expensive wristwatch; but it is perhaps more painful to be victimized simply for who you are. The cruelty of these crimes is magnified because they remind the victims of terrible things that had been done in the past to members of their group, or to them, their families, or their friends-pogroms against Jews, lynchings of blacks, rapes and beatings of women, lesbians and gay men, or grim memories in the minds of other groups.
As for the communities hit by hate crimes, these incidents make targeted individuals feel even more angry and alienated, increasing intergroup tensions of all kinds. Because victims are singled out because of who they are-and the targets of hate crimes are often community institutions such as synagogues or black churches-members of entire groups feel isolated and defenseless. Others, such as a survivor of domestic violence, must live with the fear and isolation of ongoing assaults. Rightly or wrongly, they often blame the police, the government, and other segments of society for their feelings of vulnerability. Sometimes, members of the groups that have been victimized lash out against members of other groups. Thus, hate crimes can set in motion a never-ending spiral of antagonism and divisiveness.
The victims:
Official statistics illuminate-but, greatly understate-the scope of the problem.
As required by the 1990 law, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) releases the totals each year for the numbers of hate crimes reported by state and local law enforcement agencies around the country based on race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity. These national totals have fluctuated around 6,000 or more hate crimes reported each year-6,918 in 1992, 7,587 in 1993, 5,852 in 1994 and 7,947 in 1995. It should be noted that these are figures for "incidents." The same incident may include several different "offenses"-for instance, an arson or assault may also result in death.
While more than 25,000 hate crimes reported in four years are alarming enough, the FBI statistics paint only a partial portrait of the problem. In 1994, for instance, the total number of law enforcement agencies that reported hate crimes to the FBI covered only 58% of the population of the United States. In 1995, the number of reporting agencies covered 75% of the population. The findings reflect only those cases where the victims reported
incidents to local law enforcement agencies, and these agencies had classified these incidents as hate crimes. In 1995, the FBI reported 355 incidents of hate crimes against Asian Pacific Islanders. For the same year, the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium's 1995 audit reported 458 incidents of hateful speech and hate crimes, and concluded that "anti-Asian violence is widely underreported."9 Further, the FBI collects no statistics on gender-based hate crimes, and its definition may exclude other forms of bias crimes such as attacks on Arab-Americans."
Yet even these incomplete statistics suggest the scope and sweep of the problem. Thus, of the 7,947 total incidents and 9,895 total offenses reported in 1995, there were 7,144 crimes against persons. These crimes included 4,048 acts of intimidation, 1,796 simple assaults, 1,268 aggravated assaults, 20 murders and 12 forcible rapes. Sixty percent of the incidents were motivated by racial bias, 16 percent by religious bias, 13 percent by sexual-orientation bias, and 10 percent by bias against the victims" ethnicity or national origin. All in all, there were 10,469 victims and 8,433 known offenders, not including offenses against women as a class.
The attackers:
As for the perpetrators of hate crimes, a surprisingly large number may be youthful thrill-seekers, rather than hardcore haters. According to a study conducted in 1993 for Northeastern University, 60% of offenders committed crimes for the "thrill associated with the victimization."10 Often, the perpetrators hoped their acts of violence would gain respect from their friends-a feeling that explains why so many hate crimes are committed by gangs of young men. As one young "gaybasher" explained: "We were trying to be tough to each other. It was like a game of chicken-someone dared you to do something, and there was no backing down."11
The second most common perpetrator of hate crimes, reported under the Act is the "reactive offender" who feels that he's answering an attack by his victim-a perceived insult, interracial dating, the integration of his neighborhood, or his battered wife's decision to leave. Often, the "reactive offenders" imagine that the very existence of lesbians and gay men-or having to compete with women on the job-is an assault upon their values or their own identity.
The least common offender, reported under the act, is the hard-core fanatic, imbued with the ideology of racial,
religious, or ethnic bigotry and often a member of, or a potential recruit for, an extremist organization. While the oldest organized hate groups appear to be on the decline, new strategies are emerging where organized hatemongers incite impressionable individuals to commit acts of violence against targeted minorities.
