FACULTY AND STAFF

Faculty Experts

What Do We Know About Hate Crime In America?

Over the last twenty years, hate crime (also called "bias crime") has attracted national attention as a serious problem for many communities. Although crime motivated by an offender's bias toward the victim's real or perceived race, religion, ethnic origin or sexual identity has occurred since the beginning of history, our understanding of the prevalence and scope of such crimes in this country is still fairly new. Although the media regularly cover hate crime as a popular topic, understanding why and at what rate such crimes occur is more difficult to determine. Relying exclusively on media coverage or on "official" statistics from law enforcement agencies paints only an incomplete picture of these crimes.

Associate Dean Jack McDevitt is one of the country's leading experts on the topic of hate crime. In 2000, he led a research project sponsored through the Bureau of Justice Statistics that set out to better understand the hate crime reporting process. The results from this research, released by President Clinton, were used to set Justice Department Policy regarding how law enforcement agencies were encouraged to report such crimes. In 2002, Dean McDevitt was commmissioned again by the Justice Department to conduct a follow up study conducting site visits across the country to delve more deeply into this process. The results from such ground-breaking research have helped to deepen our understanding of why bias crime is under-reported in this country, both by victims and by law enforcement agencies.

To view a copy of this report, please visit the Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research website. Hate crime is just one of the topics that our research has explored. The faculty and staff here at the College of Criminal Justice and CCJPR are committed to producing high-quality, policy-relevant research on a variety of topics.