Hate Crimes and Terrorism in the United States - Hate Crime Offenses

Hate crimes are criminal offenses motivated by the offender's personal prejudice or bias. The FBI includes hate crimes in its Uniform Crime Reporting program. Its first reports to include hate-crime data were Crime in the United States: 1996 (1997), and Hate Crime Statistics: 1996 (Clarksburg, West Virginia, no date). In the 1994 Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act, Congress added hate-motivated crimes against disabled persons to the list of bias crimes. The FBI began collecting data on crimes against persons with disabilities on January 1, 1997.

Data on hate crimes are incomplete because many incidents go unreported or cannot be verified as hate crimes. Some victims do not report hate crimes due to fear that the criminal justice system is biased against the group to which the victim belongs and that law enforcement authorities will not be responsive. Many attacks against homosexuals are not reported because the victims do not want to reveal their sexuality to others. In addition, proving that an offender acted from bias can be a long, tedious process, requiring much investigation. Until a law enforcement investigator can find enough evidence in a particular case to be sure the offender's actions came, at least in part, from bias, the crime is not counted as a hate crime.

Hate Crimes in 2002

According to the FBI, the number of hate crimes reported to the authorities fluctuated from 7,684 in 1993 to 5,852 in 1994 to 8,759 reported incidents in 1996. In 1998, 7,755 incidents were reported; by 2000 that number had increased to 8,152 incidents. In 2002 the number dropped to 7,462 hate crime incidents reported to the FBI. Racial bias motivated 49.7 percent of the hate crimes in 2002; religious bias, 17.8 percent; sexual-orientation bias, 16.6 percent; and ethnic bias, 15.2 percent. (See Figure 4.1.) Among the specific bias types, anti-black incidents accounted for the largest number of single-bias incidents (2,486), followed by 931 anti-Jewish incidents and 1,219 anti-gay and anti-lesbian incidents. (See Table 4.1.)

A hate crime may have more than one victim and multiple offenders. To tabulate hate-crime data, the FBI counts one offense for each victim of a crime against persons and one offense for each distinct act of crime against property and crime against society. Therefore, more offenses (8,832) and victims (9,222) were reported than incidents (7,462) in 2002.

FIGURE 4.1
Bias-motivated offenses, 2002
Percent distribution,* 2002

In 2002 some 7,459 incidents of single-bias hate crime occurred. A single-bias incident is a hate crime in which one type of offense (such as assault) is committed as the result of one bias-motivation (such as anti-black sentiment). Individuals were victims of 3,135 racial incidents, 1,140 sexual-orientation incidents, and 979 ethnicity/national-origin incidents. Additional single-bias incidents targeted institutions, government agencies, and religious organizations. (See Table 4.2.)

Kinds of Crime Motivated by Hate

Hate crimes are categorized in three ways: crimes against persons, crimes against property, and crimes against society. In 2002 about 67.5 percent of hate offenses were crimes against persons. Of the 5,960 hate crimes against persons, over half (3,105) were acts of intimidation, while 2,826 were assaults (1,791 simple assaults and 1,035 aggravated assaults). (See Table 4.3.)

About one-third (2,823) of hate crimes in 2002 were property crimes, a decrease from 2,905 in 1998. Most property crimes (2,347) were acts of destruction, damage, and/or vandalism. Less than 1 percent (49) of all hate crimes were crimes against society.

In the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, a surge in attacks against people of Arab descent and Muslims in general was reported, including incidents of fire

TABLE 4.1
Hate crime incidents, offenses, and known offenders, by bias motivation, 2002

Bias motivation	Incidents	Offenses	Victims1	Known offenders2
Total	7,462	8,832	9,222	7,314
Single-bias incidents	7,459	8,825	9,211	7,311
Race:	3,642	4,393	4,580	4,011
Anti-white	719	888	910	1,064
Anti-black	2,486	2,967	3,076	2,510
Anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native	62	68	72	52
Anti-Asian/Pacific Islander	217	268	280	242
Anti-multiple races, group	158	202	242	143
Religion:	1,426	1,576	1,659	568
Anti-Jewish	931	1,039	1,084	317
Anti-Catholic	53	58	71	21
Anti-Protestant	55	57	58	34
Anti-Islamic	155	170	174	103
Anti-other religion	198	217	237	73
Anti-multiple religions, group	31	32	32	18
Anti-atheism/agnosticism/etc.	3	3	3	2
Sexual orientation:	1,244	1,464	1,513	1,438
Anti-male homosexual	825	957	984	1,022
Anti-female homosexual	172	207	221	172
Anti-homosexual	222	259	267	225
Anti-heterosexual	10	26	26	6
Anti-bisexual	15	15	15	13
Ethnicity/national origin:	1,102	1,345	1,409	1,247
Anti-hispanic	480	601	639	656
Anti-other ethnicity/national origin	622	744	770	591
Disability:	45	47	50	47
Anti-physical	20	20	20	21
Anti-mental	25	27	30	26
Multiple-bias incidents3	3	7	11	3
1The term victim may refer to a person, business, institution, or society as a whole.
2The term known offender does not imply that the identity of the suspect is known, but only that an attribute of the suspect is identified, which distinguishes him/her from an unknown offender.
3A multiple-bias incident only occurs when two or more offense types are committed in a single incident. In a situation when there is more than one offense type, the agency can indicate a different bias type for each offense. In the case of a single offense type, only one bias type can be indicated.
SOURCE: "Table 2.33: Number of Incidents, Offenses, Victims, and Known Offenders, by Bias Motivation, 2002," in Crime in the United States 2002, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC, 2003

bombings, shootings, and other acts of violence. In 2000 there were only 33 reported incidents of anti-Islamic hate crimes. In the four months following the attacks, more than 250 incidents against Muslims, Arabs, and South Asians were reported. Some 70 persons were charged on the state and local levels with hate crimes directed at Arab or Muslim Americans as a result of the September 11 terrorist attacks. As of February 2002 the FBI had initiated 318 hate crime investigations involving Americans of Arab, Muslim, and Sikh heritage.

Hate-Motivated Murders

The most severe hate-motivated crime against a person is murder. In 2002, 11 bias-motivated murders were reported to the FBI, less than 1 percent of all hate offenses. By their very nature, however, murders motivated by hate or bias are the most horrible and unforgettable to society. The nation was shocked and outraged by the brutal killing of a black man, James Byrd, Jr., near the small town of Jasper, Texas, in June 1998. Two white men convicted in the murder, John William King and Lawrence Russell Brewer, were suspected of ties to white supremacy organizations. A third man, Shawn Allen Berry, was also convicted. These men beat and kicked Byrd and then chained him to the back of a pickup truck and dragged him until his body was torn apart.

To "help" the town, the Ku Klux Klan came to Jasper, stating that they were there to protect whites from blacks. The Black Muslims and the New Black Panthers came to protect blacks from whites. Fortunately, law enforcement officers and the townspeople of Jasper were able to prevent further violence. The townspeople repeatedly expressed their sorrow at the murder and begged outsiders to go away and let them try to cope with the crime and its aftermath. The Byrd family issued a written statement asking the public not to use the murder as an excuse for more hatred and retribution. They asked that Americans view the incident as a wake-up call, and that it lead to a time of self-examination and reflection.

Despite the publicity the Byrd case received, the pleas of his family seem to have had little effect on national hate crime murder statistics. Each year, equally shocking cases of hate-motivated murders occur. Buford Furrow Jr., a man with links to a white supremacist group, killed a Filipino-American postal worker after opening fire on a Jewish day care center in Los Angeles, California, in August of 1999. In March 2000 in Wilkinsburg, Pennsylvania, Ronald Taylor, an African-American, shot five white men, killing three of them. One month later, five people, including a Jewish woman, an Indian, two Asians, and one African-American, were killed in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, when Richard Scott Baumhammers, an immigration lawyer, went on a shooting rampage in April 2000. Also in 2000, in a crime similar to the killing of Byrd in Texas, two teenaged boys beat an African-American gay man and then ran over him with a car repeatedly until he was dead. In Texas, Byrd's death did lead to the passage of the James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Act on May 11, 2001. The bill intensifies penalties for crimes motivated by the victim's race, religion, sex, disability, sexual orientation, age, or national origin.

Another famous case of racially motivated murder came to a close after almost 30 years on May 22, 2002. On that day, Bobby Frank Cherry, 71, a former Ku Klux Klan member, was convicted of four counts of murder stemming from the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama. Four girls were killed—three were 14 years of age and one was 11 years old. Cherry, who had been trained in demolition in the Army, claimed during the trial that he could not have planted the bomb the night before the attack because he

TABLE 4.2
Hate crime incidents by victim type and bias motivation, 2002

		Victim type
Bias motivation	Total incidents	Individual	Business/financial institution	Government	Religious organization	Society/public	Other/unknown/multiple
Total	7,462	6,122	266	165	183	205	521
Single-bias incidents	7,459	6,120	266	165	183	205	520
Race	3,642	3,135	122	90	13	113	169
Religion	1,426	828	99	41	165	60	233
Sexual orientation	1,244	1,140	12	22	1	12	57
Ethnicity/national origin	1,102	979	31	11	4	17	60
Disability	45	38	2	1	0	3	1
Multiple-bias incidents*	3	2	0	0	0	0	1
*A multiple-bias occurs only when two or more offense types are committed in a single incident. In the case of a single offense type, only one bias can be indicated.
SOURCE: "Table 8: Hate Crime Incidents by Victim Type by Bias Motivation, 2002," in Hate Crime Statistics 2002, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC, 2003

was at home watching wrestling on TV with his cancer-stricken wife. Prosecutors were able to show that not only was there no wrestling on TV that night, but that Cherry's wife was not diagnosed with cancer until two years after the bombing. Thomas E. Blanton, Cherry's surviving accomplice in the bombing, was convicted in 2001 and sentenced to life in prison. A third accomplice, Robert Chambliss, was convicted in 1977 and later died in prison.

Where Do Hate Crimes Occur?

Of bias incidents in 2002, most (2,198) occurred at the victim's home, compared to 1,490 on highways, streets, roads, and alleys. School and college locations accounted for 789 hate crimes, 461 occurred in parking lots and garages, and 284 occurred in places of worship. (See Table 4.4.)

Who Commits Hate Crimes?

Hate crimes may be committed by an individual, a group of individuals, or an organization with a bias against certain races, religions, or societal groups. The ADL states that perpetrators of hate crimes fall into three groups: mission-oriented, reactive, and thrill-seeking.

The mission-oriented perpetrator may or may not be a member of an extremist organization, but always acts from an ideology of bigotry seeking to rid the world of what that individual or group considers evil. This type of perpetrator is the least common type of offender.

Another type of hate-crime perpetrator is the "reactive offender." This type of offender feels that he or she is retaliating against some perceived imminent harm, threat, or danger from the victim, and sees the race, ethnicity, religion, or lifestyle of the victim as responsible for the perpetrator's own problems in life. The

TABLE 4.3
Hate crime incidents, offenses, and known offenders, by type of offense, 2002

Offense type	Incidents1	Offenses	Victims2	Known offenders3
Total	7,462	8,832	9,222	7,314
Crimes against persons:	4,784	5,960	5,960	6,090
Murder and nonnegligent manslaughter	11	11	11	15
Forcible rape	8	8	8	16
Aggravated assault	800	1,035	1,035	1,498
Simple assault	1,473	1,791	1,791	2,436
Intimidation	2,484	3,105	3,105	2,117
Other4	8	10	10	8
Crimes against property:	2,823	2,823	3,213	1,423
Robbery	131	131	179	269
Burglary	131	131	163	86
Larceny-theft	151	151	157	95
Motor vehicle theft	9	9	9	3
Arson	38	38	47	27
Destruction/damage/vandalism	2,347	2,347	2,642	927
Other4	16	16	16	16
Crimes against society4	49	49	49	61
1The actual number of incidents is 7,462. However, the column figures will not add to the total because incidents may include more than one offense type, and these are counted in each appropriate offense type category.
2The term victim may refer to a person, business, institution, or society as a whole.
3The term known offender does not imply that the identity of the suspect is known, but only that an attribute of the suspect is identified, which distinguishes him/her from an unknown offender. The actual number of known offenders is 7,314. However, the column figures will not add to the total because some offenders are responsible for more than one offense type, and they are, therefore, counted more than once in this table.
4Includes additional offenses collected in NIBRS.
SOURCE: "Table 2.34: Number of Offenses, Victims, and Known Offenders, by Offense Type, 2002," in Crime in the United States 2002, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC, 2003

offense is usually opportunistic (based on spur-of-the-moment impulses). Frequently, alcohol or drug use is a factor. The reactive offender is the most common type of perpetrator.

TABLE 4.4
Hate crime incidents by bias motivation and location, 2002

		Bias motivation
Location	Total incidents	Race	Religion	Sexual orientation	Ethnicity/national origin	Disability	Multiple-bias incidents*
Total	7,462	3,642	1,426	1,244	1,102	45	3
Air/bus/train terminal	63	38	8	10	5	2	0
Bank/savings and loan	19	9	4	4	2	0	0
Bar/night club	128	63	5	42	18	0	0
Church/synagogue/temple	284	28	241	4	10	1	0
Commercial office building	200	83	48	18	48	3	0
Construction site	19	11	2	2	4	0	0
Convenience store	114	38	9	17	49	1	0
Department/discount store	58	37	11	6	4	0	0
Drug store/doctor's office/hospital	51	24	10	8	9	0	0
Field/woods	69	43	6	10	10	0	0
Government/public building	82	38	20	9	14	1	0
Grocery/supermarket	51	22	10	7	12	0	0
Highway/road/alley/street	1,490	855	117	309	200	9	0
Hotel/motel/etc.	55	26	10	10	9	0	0
Jail/prison	42	26	2	4	10	0	0
Lake/waterway	12	5	1	3	3	0	0
Liquor store	14	4	1	1	8	0	0
Parking lot/garage	461	277	62	68	52	2	0
Rental storage facility	9	4	2	0	1	2	0
Residence/home	2,198	1,092	373	383	338	9	3
Restaurant	166	74	14	29	48	1	0
School/college	789	402	149	167	66	5	0
Service/gas station	78	39	13	7	18	1	0
Specialty store (TV, fur, etc.)	93	38	24	6	25	0	0
Other/unknown	915	365	284	120	138	8	0
Multiple locations	2	1	0	0	1	0	0
*A multiple-bias occurs only when two or more offense types are committed in a single incident. In the case of a single offense type, only one bias can be indicated.
SOURCE: "Table 10: Hate Crime Incidents by Bias Motivation, by Location," in Hate Crime Statistics, 2002, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC, 2003

In 1997 the Leadership Conference Education Fund (LCEF), a civil-rights advocacy group, published Cause for Concern: Hate Crimes in America (Washington, D.C.). Surprisingly, the LCEF found that "youthful thrill-seekers" were also responsible for a large number of hate crimes.

In 2002 whites committed 3,712 of all hate crimes (about 42 percent), blacks were responsible for 1,082 (12 percent), and the offender was unknown in about 34 percent of all cases. Racial acts by whites against blacks accounted for 1,689 hate crimes, the largest percentage of all racial incidents. Of the 639 racially motivated attacks by blacks, 497 were directed against whites. (See Table 4.5.)

The Burning of Houses of Worship

A rash of church arsons in the early 1990s—53 black churches were burned between 1990 and June 1996, 23 of them in 1996 alone—created a wave of national concern, and motivated the federal government to commit new resources to investigate the fires. In June 1996 the National Church Arson Task Force (NCATF) was formed to coordinate the efforts of federal, state, and local law enforcement. The FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) worked with local and state law officers to investigate church arsons. Other federal groups also pitched in to help rebuild houses of worship and ease community tensions.

From January 1995 to mid-August 2000, the NCATF investigated 945 arsons and bombings of houses of worship. Almost 33 percent were black churches (310). Over 67 percent were other houses of worship. Of the 486 arsons that occurred in the South, 43.8 percent were aimed at black places of worship. (See Figure 4.2.)

ARRESTS.

From 1995 through August 2000, law enforcement officers made arrests in 36.2 percent of 945 investigations of arsons of houses of worship. Investigations in 61.8 percent of cases were still pending. (See Figure 4.3.) Of the 342 suspects arrested, 136 were arrested for attacks on black houses of worship and 290 for acts against nonblack places of worship.

RACE, AGE, AND SEX OF ARRESTEES.

For all of the arsons, over 80 percent of arrestees were white, while

TABLE 4.5
Hate crime offenses by known offender's race and bias motivation, 2002

		Known offender's race
Bias motivation	Total offenses	White	Black	American Indian/Alaskan Native	Asian/Pacific Islander	Multiple races, group	Unknown race	Unknown offender
Total	8,832	3,712	1,082	46	61	218	651	3,062
Single-bias incidents	8,825	3,710	1,082	46	61	218	648	3,060
Race:	4,393	2,040	639	29	38	127	344	1,176
Anti-white	888	130	497	8	11	34	71	137
Anti-black	2,967	1,689	84	14	26	72	217	865
Anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native	68	31	1	2	0	1	9	24
Anti-Asian/Pacific Islander	268	104	38	4	1	15	22	84
Anti-multiple races, group	202	86	19	1	0	5	25	66
Religion:	1,576	327	46	1	8	13	138	1,043
Anti-Jewish	1,039	179	15	1	4	5	98	737
Anti-Catholic	58	10	1	0	2	1	3	41
Anti-Protestant	57	17	3	0	0	0	7	30
Anti-Islamic	170	59	19	0	1	7	9	75
Anti-other religion	217	50	6	0	1	0	17	143
Anti-multiple religions, group	32	11	1	0	0	0	4	16
Anti-atheism/agnosticism/etc.	3	1	1	0	0	0	0	1
Sexual orientation:	1,464	679	210	8	6	46	88	427
Anti-male homosexual	957	458	151	4	5	30	50	259
Anti-female homosexual	207	94	25	2	0	7	12	67
Anti-homosexual	259	118	29	2	1	8	25	76
Anti-heterosexual	26	6	0	0	0	0	1	19
Anti-bisexual	15	3	5	0	0	1	0	6
Ethnicity/national origin:	1,345	647	178	8	9	29	73	401
Anti-Hispanic	601	323	111	0	0	5	25	137
Anti-other ethnicity/national origin	744	324	67	8	9	24	48	264
Disability:	47	17	9	0	0	3	5	13
Anti-physical	20	9	6	0	0	0	2	3
Anti-mental	27	8	3	0	0	3	3	10
Multiple-bias incidents*	7	2	0	0	0	0	3	2
*A multiple-bias incident occurs only when two or more offense types are committed in a single incident. In a situation where there is more than one offense type, the agency can indicate a different bias for each offense. In the case of a single offense type, only one bias can be indicated.
SOURCE: "Table 5: Hate Crime Offenses by Known Offender's Race, by Bias Motivation," in Hate Crime Statistics, 2002, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Washington, DC, 2003

15.1 percent of those arrested were African-American and 3 percent were Hispanic. Of attacks on black churches, 62.5 percent of arrestees were Caucasian, 36.8 percent were African-American, and less than 1 percent were Hispanic. For all other houses of worship, almost 90 percent of those arrested were Caucasian, while 5.2 percent were African-American, 4.1 percent were Hispanic, and one percent were Asian. (See Figure 4.4.)

Males (91.9 percent) ages 14 to 24 (58.2 percent) were the most likely group to be arrested for church arsons and bombings. Only 8.1 percent of those arrested were females. Only 27.6 percent of arrestees were older than age 24. Some 14.2 percent of arrestees (61) were between the ages of six and 13. (See Figure 4.5.)