What is hate crime? Narrow legal definition makes it hard to charge and convict
AWhite man travels to one business and kills several workers. he then kills more people at a similar business. Six of the eight people he killed are Asian women, leading many people to call for him to be charged under the new state hate crime law. Authorities resist, saying they aren’t sure that racial bias motivated the man’s crimes.
That’s the situation unfolding in the Atlanta area in Georgia, right now. But there is often a gap between public opinion and law enforcement when people believe a hate crime has been committed, whether against LGBTQ people, racial minorities or Jewish people.
hate crimes and hate murders are rising across the US, but long-term polling data suggests that most Americans are horrified by bias-motivated violence. They also support hate crime legislation, an effort to deter such attacks.
Yet officials often resist the quick classification of incidents as a hate crime. hate crimes have precise qualities, which must be met in order to satisfy legal requirements. And even when police and prosecutors believe the elements of a hate crime are present, such crimes can be difficult to prove in court.
The first use of the term “hate crime” in federal legislation was the hate Crimes Statistics Act of 1990. This was not a criminal statute but rather a data-gathering requirement that mandated that the US attorney general collect data on crimes that “evidenced prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” In some states, bias on gender, age and gender identity are also included.
hate crime laws have been passed by 47 states and the federal government since the 1980s, when activists first began to press state legislatures to recognize the role of bias in violence against minority groups. today, only Arkansas, South Carolina and Wyoming do not have hate crime laws.
In order to be charged as a hate crime, attacks—whether assault, killings or vandalism—must be directed at individuals because of the prohibited biases. hate crimes, in other words, punish motive; the prosecutor must convince the judge or jury that the victim was targeted because of their race, religion, sexual orientation or other protected characteristic.
hate crime legislation, however, has not led to as many charges and convictions as activists may have hoped. law enforcement struggle to identify hate crime and prosecute the offenders. even though 47 states have hate crime laws, 86.1 percent of law-enforcement agencies reported to the FBI that not a single hate crime had occurred in their jurisdiction in 2019, according to the latest FBI data collected.
“What weights do you give to race, dope, territory? These things are 90 percent gray— there are no black-and-white incidents,” said one 20-year veteran police officer in a 1996 study of hate crime.
Without the right training and organizational structure, officers are unclear about common markers of bias motivation, and tend to assume that they must go to extraordinary lengths to figure out why suspects committed the crime.
even law-enforcement officers specifically trained in bias crime identification still may not name incidents as hate crime that, to the general public, seem obviously bias-driven. This may be the result of police bias. hate crime laws reflect American ideals of fairness, justice and equity. But if crimes motivated by bias aren’t reported, well investigated, charged or brought to trial, it matters little what state law says.