research paper on hate crimes

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Using Research to Improve Hate Crime Reporting and Identification

Hate crimes harm whole communities. They are message crimes that tell all members of a group—not just the immediate victims—that they are unwelcome and at risk.

The damage that bias victimization causes multiplies when victims and justice agencies don’t recognize or report hate crimes as such. In addition, in cases for which law enforcement agencies fail to respond to or investigate hate crimes, relationships between law enforcement and affected communities can suffer, and public trust in police can erode. [1]

While it is known that hate crimes are underreported throughout the United States, there is not a clear understanding of exactly why reporting rates are low, to what extent, and what might be done to improve them. An even more elementary question, with no single answer, is: What constitutes a hate crime? Different state statutes and law enforcement agencies have different answers to that question, which further complicates the task of identifying hate crimes and harmonizing hate crime data collection and statistics.

See "Hate Crimes: A Distinct Category."

A recent series of evidence-based research initiatives supported by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ) is helping to narrow this critical knowledge gap and illuminate a better path forward. The study findings fill in vital details on causes of hate crime underreporting in various communities, including

hate crime victims’ reluctance to engage with law enforcement;
victims’ and law enforcement agencies’ inability to recognize certain victimizations as hate crimes;
a very large deficit of hate crime reporting by law enforcement agencies of all sizes; and
variations in hate crime definitions across jurisdictions.

Significant insights to emerge from those studies include the following: [2]

A growing number of members of the Latino community, particularly those who recently immigrated to the United States, reported experiencing bias victimization. (But Black communities endure more hate crimes than any other racial or ethnic group.)
Many Latino individuals, especially immigrants, tend to report bias victimization only to friends and family. They are often highly reluctant to share incidents with law enforcement or other authorities.
LGBTQ+ community members also reported an elevated rate of bias victimization. Some victims hesitate to report hate crimes to authorities out of fear of reprisals from law enforcement or because, among other reasons, they don’t want their sexual orientation or gender identity exposed.
Many hate crimes, particularly those targeting the LGBTQ+ community, are the product of mixed motivations—for example, hate and theft. This likely results from a perception that certain victim groups are vulnerable and less likely to report the crimes.
Law enforcement officers often lack the training and knowledge needed to investigate, identify, and report hate crimes. The presence of a dedicated officer or unit enhances a law enforcement agency’s ability to identify, respond to, and report hate crimes.
Law enforcement agencies with policies in place that support hate crime investigation and enforcement are more likely to report investigating possible hate crimes in their jurisdiction.

In the end, knowledge gained from the NIJ-supported research on bias victimization and hate crime can strengthen hate crime recognition, reporting, and response.

See "Hate Crime vs. Bias Victimization."

Hate Crime Reporting Deficit Driven by Fear, Lack of Knowledge

Federal data captures roughly 1 in 31 hate crimes.

The disparity between the number of hate crime victimizations that actually occur and the number reported by law enforcement is vast and long-standing. As hate crimes continue to rise in the United States, especially in vulnerable populations, the search for ways to reduce that disparity becomes more urgent.

A representative sample of hate crime victimizations across the United States, collected from the National Crime Victimization Survey, revealed that only a small portion of all hate crimes find their way into official hate crime reporting. [3] An annual average of 243,770 hate crime victimizations of persons 12 or older occurred between 2010 and 2019. [4] In the same period, law enforcement agencies reported an annual average of 7,830 hate crimes to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics program. Those figures suggest that roughly 1 of every 31 hate crimes is captured in U.S. federal statistics.

The FBI has published hate crime statistics provided by law enforcement since 1996. However, submitting hate crime data to the FBI is voluntary, and many state and local law enforcement agencies either report that their jurisdictions experience no hate crimes or do not report any hate crime data. [5]

Three Conditions for a Hate Crime to Enter National Statistics

The overall investigation and prosecution of hate crimes suffer from the prevalence of inaccurate hate crime data. The COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act of 2021 acknowledges that incomplete data from federal, state, and local jurisdictions have hindered our understanding of hate crimes. [6] Without a full, data-informed understanding of the problem, law enforcement and communities will be unable to provide an adequate response.

Three steps must occur for federal statistics to capture a hate crime incident.

A victim, a victim’s friend or family member, or another person with knowledge of the incident must report the incident to law enforcement.
Upon receiving an incident report, law enforcement must recognize and record it as a hate crime by establishing sufficient evidence through an investigation. [7]
The law enforcement agency must report the hate crime to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program.

Reporting barriers are present at each step of the process, which results in chronic and acute underreporting of hate crimes.

Dealing With Divergent Hate Crime Definitions

Although the FBI has a definition for hate crimes, their definition only affects state data-reporting obligations. The FBI definition has no impact on states’ own criminal code definitions. State and local hate crime definitions vary widely in terms of whom they protect and the types of offenses they include. [8] The varying hate crime definitions make it challenging to obtain an even-handed and reliable summary of hate crime statistics across jurisdictions. When recording cases for the FBI, law enforcement agencies are required to adhere to the federal definition of offenses and protected groups. [9] An offense that constitutes a federal hate crime may not constitute a hate crime in a state or local jurisdiction; the reverse could also be true. As a result, hate crime counts based on jurisdiction-specific definitions are not always comparable to counts reported by the FBI.

Understanding Victim Reluctance to Report Hate Crimes

NIJ-sponsored research on hate crimes that affect Latino and LGBTQ+ communities suggests that many factors influence whether individuals who experience or witness hate crimes report them to law enforcement. Those factors vary across communities.

Researchers at Northeastern University, the University of Massachusetts Lowell, the University of Texas Medical Branch, and the University of Delaware conducted a study of victimization bias affecting three large, geographically diverse Latino populations. The study found that victims who experienced bias victimization overwhelmingly sought help from friends or family and not from formal authorities, particularly law enforcement. [10] The report rates to formal authorities by nonimmigrant and immigrant Latinos were similar, though nonimmigrant Latinos were more likely than immigrant Latinos to report experiencing bias victimization. It’s important to note that the Latino community is large and varied in the United States, and victimization bias varies by nature and degree across Latino communities. Many Latino study participants said that their past experiences as victims of personal or indirect discrimination have made them less willing to report their bias victimization to authorities or to trust those outside of their community.

Among Latino populations, several factors influenced their reluctance to contact law enforcement about hate crimes, including concern over retaliation by the offending party, harassment by police, and worries over the victim’s immigration status.

Florida International University conducted a study of LGBTQ+ Latinos in Miami, Florida, that established an additional factor that inhibited victim reporting of hate crimes to law enforcement: concern about the consequences of revealing their sexual orientation or gender identity. [11] The study also found that friends’ encouragement to report a crime was “by far” the strongest predictor of hate crime reporting, which increased the likelihood of the victim reporting the crime at least ten-fold.

Multiple Sources of Initial Hate Crime Reporting to Law Enforcement

Although it is vital for victims to report hate crimes, it is not the only way that law enforcement finds out about these types of crimes. The National Hate Crime Investigation Study found that, of all incidents reported to law enforcement in a nationally representative sample, victims reported 45 percent of those hate crimes and other individuals reported 52 percent. [12]

The Miami-based study reported that criminal justice practitioners perceived that law enforcement initiates most hate crime cases in response to media coverage of bias-motivated events rather than in response to victims’ reporting. 13

Low rates of formal reporting obscure the significant impact that hate crimes have on victims. Bias victimization can be just as, or more, damaging to Latino victims than other types of victimization, such as assault or theft. Among the three large metro Latino communities that the Latino bias research study examined, bias victimization had more of a mental health impact on community members than other forms of victimization. [14] In fact, bias victimization is unique in its negative impact on mental health. This has notable implications for both prevention and intervention within the community.

The Miami-Dade study of LGBTQ+ Latino individuals reported these other consequences of bias victimization (perhaps influenced by mental health impacts):

Victims began to avoid LGBTQ+ venues or friends (13 percent).
Victims had to change their housing (23 percent).
Victims tried to act more “straight” (35 percent).

The strongest predictor of a victim changing their housing was that the victim experienced a hate crime involving the use of a weapon.

Recognizing Hate Crime Incidents

It isn’t enough for a law enforcement agency to receive a report of a hate crime incident if the agency doesn’t recognize and report the incident as such. But identifying a bias motivation can be challenging. It’s not always clear what motivated a person to commit a crime, and other factors unrelated to bias may mask an incident’s hate-based status. Further, it’s not typical for law enforcement to be required to identify a motive.

Mixed-Motive Hate Offenses: Choosing Victims for Their Vulnerability

Bias motives can emerge during disputes or incidents that are unrelated to bias, which potentially complicates law enforcement’s ability to identify a motive. NIJ-sponsored research by the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), a research center at the University of Maryland, found that these mixed-motive hate offenses are common. [15] START developed a database known as BIAS (the Bias Incidents and Actors Study), which collected information from 960 adult individuals who committed hate crimes from 1990 to 2018.

BIAS found that almost a quarter of hate crimes targeting victims due to their sexual orientation or gender had mixed motives. Additionally, nearly all hate crimes that targeted persons because of their age or physical or mental disabilities had mixed motives, such as a combination of hate and theft. The researchers noted that, in those cases in particular, the crime likely results from the fact that the person committing it perceives that certain victim groups are vulnerable and less inclined to report incidents to authorities. The study also found that mixed-motive hate crimes were more likely to be spontaneous or otherwise unpredictable than crimes motivated only by bias.

Varying Hate-Based Forms of Messaging – How to Identify a Crime as Hate-Motivated

A University of New Hampshire research team identified the top four indicators of hate motivation that law enforcement identified and reported in the National Hate Crime Investigation Study (NHCIS):

Hate-related verbal comments (reported by victims in 51.83 percent of hate crimes in the NHCIS database)
Victim belief that they were targeted because of hate or bias (28.96 percent)
Hate-related written comments (24.75 percent)
Hate-related drawings or graffiti found at the crime scene (23.39 percent) [16]

Characteristics of Primary Suspects in Hate Crime Investigations

The NHCIS examined characteristics of suspects from a sample of 783 hate crime investigations in 2018 where law enforcement identified a suspect. [17] The primary suspects were white in nearly three-quarters (73.69 percent) of those cases. See Table 1 for a breakdown of characteristics of primary suspects.

Table Note: Percentages for primary suspect gender, race/ethnicity, and age presented for cases in which information was known. Unknown/missing data: gender=59, 7.27% (weighted); race/ethnicity=145, 18.41% (weighted); age=221, 29.9% (weighted).

Varying Traits of Those Who Commit Hate Crimes

The START database study, BIAS, found that the behaviors, experiences, and characteristics of those who commit hate crimes in the United States varied significantly.

Some offenders were fully engaged in the world of bigotry and hate when they committed a bias-based offense, while others were acting on bias themes that pervade U.S. communities.
Some committed crimes of opportunity, while others carefully premeditated their acts.
Some were susceptible to negative peer influences or were struggling with mental health issues or substance abuse. [18]

The study also established that the characteristics of persons who commit hate crimes also varied considerably, depending on the nature of the prejudice involved. For example:

Those who committed hate crimes based on their victims’ religious beliefs were often older, better educated, and had higher rates of military experience than those who committed hate crimes based on other motivations.
Those motivated by religious bias displayed high rates of mental health concerns and were most likely to plan or commit hate crimes.
Those motivated by bias based on sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity were often young, unmarried, and unemployed. They were also most likely to commit hate crimes with accomplices and while under the influence of drugs or alcohol.

Agency Reporting of Zero Hate Crimes

Data analyses from the NIJ-supported NHCIS showed that many U.S. law enforcement agencies, regardless of size, reported that they conducted no hate crime investigations within 2018. This is consistent with the FBI’s assessment from hate crime statistics provided by law enforcement agencies. According to the FBI, generally, around 85 percent of law enforcement agencies said that no hate crimes occurred in their jurisdiction. [19] That is good news if no hate crimes occurred, but it is problematic if hate crimes are occurring without being reported or investigated as such.

The hate crime investigations study authors noted that although over half of large agencies (100+ officers) reported no hate crimes investigations in 2018, several large agencies reported more than 50 hate crimes investigations that year. Based on an assessment of case summaries, the researchers concluded that better documentation increased the number of investigations. They also found that agency policies and procedures increased the number of hate crime investigations.

Implications and Recommendations: How Research Can Enhance Hate Crime Reporting, Investigations

NIJ-supported hate crime research identified several proposals to improve hate crime investigation and reporting. One promising area is for agencies to implement certain hate crime policies and practices. The NHCIS surveyed agencies on whether they had implemented five specific policies and practices. The study found four of the five were significantly related to an increased number of reported hate crime investigations, even when controlling for agency type and size: [20]

Assigning a dedicated officer or unit to investigate hate crimes.
Reviewing procedures for cases with possible hate or bias motivation.
Developing written policy guidelines for investigating hate crimes.
Conducting outreach to local groups on hate crimes.

Researchers found no significant differences in hate crime reporting rates between agencies that had provided officers with training on hate crime investigations, and those that had not; however, the study did not look at the nature and quality of the hate crime training the officers received. The NHCIS noted that officers with minimal training are often tasked with identifying hate crimes based on their state’s legal definition. The report also noted that bias-based crimes are often hard to classify, even with good training. More information is needed to determine the optimal type and focus of hate crime training. The Latino bias studies identified a need to both identify hate crimes and increase community education on hate crimes. The research team identified the following policy and process needs, among others, to improve identification and reporting:

Enhance police training about risks associated with bias victimization in Latino communities.
Increase education and awareness about bias victimization among Latino population groups.
Build support for community-based agencies to facilitate the formal process of helping victims and reporting hate crimes to law enforcement. [21]

The study of LGBTQ+ Latinos in Miami identified the following recommendations to improve how law enforcement agencies report and identify anti-LGBTQ hate crimes:

Establish a hate crime detection protocol for emergency dispatchers, patrol officers, police detectives, case screeners, and prosecutors.
Develop a specialized workforce to identify, tackle, and prevent hate crimes; the workforce should be composed of prosecutors, detectives, patrol officers, victims’ liaisons, emergency dispatchers, researchers, and community experts.
Create a dedicated support center for hate crime victims.
Recruit police officers and prosecutors from the LGBTQ+ community.
Develop formal policies to affirm and support transgender colleagues, victims, and witnesses.
Encourage cooperation by pursuing victim engagement alternatives to subpoenas. Train criminal justice practitioners to improve victim engagement and hate crime detection, evidence gathering, and case screening.
Engage in effective communication and awareness-building campaigns, such as initiatives to encourage victims to tell friends about the incident, as well as encouraging friends to persuade a victim to report the crime. [22]

It is critical for both communities and law enforcement to improve their methods of reporting and identifying hate crimes. Only then will they be able to prevent and respond to incidents and link victims to services they need. Doing so will also enable the field to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the scope and nature of the problem. The current gap between the number of hate crime victimizations and the number of hate crimes that law enforcement reported and investigated threatens the relationship between law enforcement and targeted communities. Chronic, widespread underreporting of hate crimes also greatly reduces the likelihood of justice for victims.

Findings from NIJ-supported research provide important insight into the causes of underreporting and under-identification of hate crimes. These studies also offer policy and practice recommendations to improve how law enforcement agencies report and identify hate crimes.

Sidebar: Hate Crimes: A Distinct Crime Category

The codification of hate crime laws began in the 1980s, as jurisdictions acted to redress the harm, beyond victim impact, that bias-based victimizations inflict on society. [23] In a 2022 solicitation for further hate crime research, NIJ noted,

Hate crimes are a distinct category of crime that have a broader effect than most other kinds of crime because the victims are not only the crime’s immediate target but also others in the targeted group. [24]

Hate crimes are traditional criminal offenses with an added element of bias motivation. They are not limited to crimes against persons; the crimes can target businesses, religious institutions, other organizations, and society at large. Additionally, hate crimes are not limited to one type of motivating prejudice. The FBI defines a hate crime as:

a criminal offense committed against a person or property which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias against race, religion, disability, ethnic or national origin group, or sexual orientation group. [25]

Hate crimes can be violent or nonviolent, but the acts must be recognized criminal offenses even if the bias element is set aside. Yet the wide net cast by hate crime laws has not resulted in high rates of hate crime prosecution or punishment. As noted in an NIJ-sponsored report on findings from the National Hate Crime Investigations Study, only 4 percent of hate crimes investigated by law enforcement resulted in someone being criminally charged. [26]

Return to the text.

Sidebar: Hate Crime vs. Bias Victimization

Hate crimes are a form of bias victimization. A criminal offense is a core element of every hate crime. However, not every bias victimization is a crime. In simple math terms, hate crimes are a subset of all bias victimizations.

The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program (UCR) defines a hate crime as a “committed criminal offense which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias(es)” against a

sexual orientation
gender identity27

State and local jurisdictions have their own hate crime statutes proscribing some or all of those or other types of bias. An act of bias victimization can be, but need not be, a criminal offense.

Return to text.

[note 1] International Association of Chiefs of Police, Responding to Hate Crimes: A Police Officer’s Guide to Investigation and Prevention (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Administration, 1999).

[note 2] The five NIJ-supported hate crime study reports covered in this article are: Carlos A. Cuevas, et al., Understanding and Measuring Bias Victimization Against Latinos , October 2019, NCJ 253430; Carlos A. Cuevas, et al., Longitudinal Examination of Victimization Experiences of Latinos (LEVEL): Extending the Bias Victimization Study , August 2021, NCJ 30167; Michael A. Jensen, Elizabeth A. Yates, and Sheehan E. Kane, A Pathway Approach to the Study of Bias Crime Offenders , February 2021, NCJ 300114; Besiki Luka Kutateladze, Anti-LGBTQ Hate Crimes in Miami: Research Summary and Policy Recommendations , September 2021, NCJ 302239; Lisa M. Jones, Kimberly J. Mitchell, and Heather A. Turner, U.S. Hate Crime Investigation Rates and Characteristics: Findings from the National Hate Crime Investigations Study (NHCIS) , December 2021, NCJ 304531.

[note 3] Grace Kena and Alexandra Thompson, Hate Crime Victimization, 2005–2019 (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ), Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2021).

[note 4] Erica Smith, Hate Crime Recorded by Law Enforcement, 2010–2019 (Washington, DC: U.S. DOJ, BJS, 2021.

[note 5] Smith, Hate Crime Recorded by Law Enforcement .

[note 6] COVID-19 Hate Crimes Act, Pub. L. No. 117-17, 123 Stat. 2835 and 135 Stat. 265, 266, 267, 268, 269, 270, 271 and 272 (2021).

[note 7] Global Law Enforcement Support Section (GLESS) Crime and Law Enforcement Statistics Unit (CLESU), Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines and Training Manual (Washington, DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation: Criminal Justice Information Division Uniform Crime Reporting Program, 2022).

[note 8] U.S. Department of Justice, “ Laws and Policies .”

[note 9] GLESS CLESU, Hate Crime Data Collection Guidelines and Training Manual.

[note 10] Cuevas, et al., Understanding and Measuring Bias Victimization Against Latinos ; Cuevas, et al., Longitudinal Examination of Victimization Experiences of Latinos (LEVEL) .

[note 11] Kutateladze, Anti-LGBTQ Hate Crimes in Miami .

[note 12] Jones, Mitchell, and Turner, U.S. Hate Crime Investigation Rates and Characteristics .

[note 13] The practitioners were prosecutors who handled hate crime cases in the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, detectives from the Miami-Dade Police Department, one victim liaison from the police department, and one from the prosecutor’s office; Kutateladze, Anti-LGBTQ Hate Crimes in Miami .

[note 14] The three-community bias study survey sampled Latino community members generally, not limited to self-identified bias victims. Respondents reported on their own bias experiences. Overall, 52.9 percent of participants experienced some form of bias event in their lifetime.

[note 15] Jensen, Yates, and Kane, A Pathway Approach to the Study of Bias Crime Offende rs .

[note 16] Jones, Mitchell, and Turner, U.S. Hate Crime Investigation Rates and Characteristics .

[note 17] Jones, Mitchell, and Turner, U.S. Hate Crime Investigation Rates and Characteristics .

[note 18] Jensen, Yates, and Kane, A Pathway Approach to the Study of Bias Crime Offenders .

[note 19] Smith, Hate Crime Recorded by Law Enforcement .

[note 20] Jones, Mitchell, and Turner, U.S. Hate Crime Investigation Rates and Characteristics .

[note 21] Cuevas, et al., Understanding and Measuring Bias Victimization Against Latinos ; Cuevas, et al., Longitudinal Examination of Victimization Experiences of Latinos (LEVEL) .

[note 22] Kutateladze, Anti-LGBTQ Hate Crimes in Miami .

23 Ryken Grattet and Valerie Jenness, Making Hate a Crime: From Social Movements to Law Enforcement (New York, NY: Russel Sage Foundation, 2001).

[note 24] NIJ FY22 Research and Evaluation on Hate Crime (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, National Institute of Justice, 2022).

[note 25] FBI, “Defining a Hate Crime.”

[note 26] Lisa M. Jones, Kimberly J. Mitchell, and Heather A. Turner, U.S. Hate Crime Investigation Rates and Characteristics: Findings from the National Hate Crime Investigations Study (NHCIS) , December 2021, NCJ 304531.

[note 27] FBI Hate Crime Statistics Reports, UCR, “Definition of a Hate Crime.”

About the author

Kaitlyn Sill, Ph.D. is a Social Science Research Analyst at the National Institute of Justice. Paul A. Haskins, JD, is a contract Writer-Editor supporting the National Institute of Justice.

Cite this Article

Hidden Hate, Hidden Violence: Dismantling Myths and Identifying Fresh Challenges for Research and Policy

Neil chakraborti.

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Leah Burch, Liverpool Hope University, Taggart Avenue, Childwall, Liverpool, L16 9JD, UK. Email: [email protected]

Collection date 2024 Sep.

This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ( https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ ) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access page ( https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage ).

Hate crime has become an increasingly familiar term within global scholarship, with advancements in conceptual understanding and empirical knowledge helping to generate improved policy responses across many parts of the world. However, the continued demonization of 'other' identities, the escalating volume of hate incidents worldwide and the prevailing climate of rising tensions, decreasing resources and political de-prioritization all suggest that many urgent challenges remain. Contributors to this special issue have dismantled common stereotypes and misperceptions which hamper our collective capacity to address contemporary expressions of hate and violence. In doing so, they draw from their research evidence to identify “hidden” challenges which should be at the forefront of attempts to address the causes, effects, and prevention of all forms of violence. This call for reconfiguration is the unifying theme which runs through each article, and which paves the way for more nuanced analyses that offer new frameworks for responding to the diverse and changing patterns of violence. These are challenges which straddle disciplinary boundaries, geographical borders, and the physical/digital world, and which demand the international, intersectional, and interdisciplinary perspectives evident within this special issue.

Keywords: Hate crime, hostility, victims, violence, marginalisation

As an umbrella concept used in its broadest sense to describe expressions of violence motivated by hostility toward identity or perceived “difference” ( Hardy & Chakraborti, 2019 ), hate crime has become an increasingly familiar term within global scholarship. Empirical and conceptual advancements have seen the emergence of new knowledge and fresh ideas which continue to inform our understanding of what hate crimes are, whom they affect, and why they are committed. This growth of academic enquiry has been both welcome and necessary, and alongside improved awareness within the domains of scholarship and activism, it has generated improved responses to hate crime across many parts of the world.

This is evident through measures such as the introduction of laws governing hate acts and speech, the publication of policy guidance documents, the provision of specific training, and refinements to reporting, recording, and victim support processes, to name just some examples of ways in which governments and law enforcement agencies have sought to prioritize issues of hate crimes, most prominently within the earlier stages of this century ( Hall et al., 2015 ). In addition to their practical value in shaping responses to individual hate incidents, the symbolic role that such measures can play in contexts and environments where the identities, values, and cultures of particular communities are under scrutiny is particularly significant. Indeed, just as hate crimes are often described as “message crimes” designed to convey a message from the perpetrator to the victim (and their wider community) that they “don’t belong,” the process of criminalizing expressions of hate can convey an equally powerful message of solidarity to marginalized members of society ( Chakraborti, 2012 ).

And yet, despite these prima facie positive developments, many urgent challenges remain. At the time of writing, levels of recorded hate crime continue to escalate across the world, with consistent and alarming surges observed over an extended number of years across the UK, US, Canada, Australia, and Europe (see, inter alia, European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights, 2021; FBI, 2023; Home Office, 2023 ; Hope Not Hate, 2023 ; Moreau, 2021; Tan et al., 2021 ). This upsurge in targeted violence does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it has been fueled by rising populism, global conflicts, and economic austerity; exacerbated by the ripple effects of damaging events such as the backlash toward the Black Lives Matter movement, the inequalities exposed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and repeated terrorist incidents; and enabled by structural discrimination, political inaction, and legitimized hostility. Individually and collectively, these multiple points of crisis have exposed fault lines and fragilities across Western nations and raised pressing questions for scholarship and policy.

The normalization of hostile attitudes and actions is a cause for significant concern, not least because it is rooted within a wider set of embedded processes whereby violence is used as a tool to marginalize “difference,” to weaponize fear, and to sustain hegemonic boundaries. An increasingly extensive body of literature has shown that attacks against the “other” can feed off economic and political volatility to the point where violence becomes a mechanism used to reinforce power imbalances between dominant and subordinate groups and to create cultures of suspicion toward “alien” communities (see, inter alia, Chakraborti & Garland, 2012 ; Perry, 2001 ). Research has also shown how “trigger” events of local, national, and international significance can influence the prevalence and severity of hate incidents within cyberspace and the physical world, thereby heightening the vulnerability of many groups and communities at a time when “other” identities are under greater scrutiny than perhaps ever before (Awan & Zempi, 2017).

Just as the growing volume of hate incidents demands new channels of academic enquiry, so too do their associated harms and impacts. Researchers have shown that hate crimes generate harms which are qualitatively distinct from the emotions that victims of parallel crimes may experience because of the deeply personal nature of the attack on their core identity ( Craig-Henderson & Sloan, 2003 ; Iganski & Lagou, 2015 ). In this context, victims are especially likely to experience greater harms when, as a member of a stigmatized and marginalized group, their experiences of violence bring to the fore the fear and pain caused by historical, systematic attacks on their identity group (see also Paterson et al., 2018 ). Equally, researchers have highlighted that these harms can take a variety of forms, including the psychological and emotional trauma of victimization, the physical impacts of interpersonal violence, the in terrorem effects within wider communities, and the financial costs of repairing property or seeking medical or therapeutic support ( Burch, 2021 ; Chakraborti et al., 2014 ; Hardy & Chakraborti, 2019 ; Perry & Alvi, 2012 ). But less clear is how we should seek to acknowledge and respond to these harms in a climate of escalating tensions, decreasing resource, and widespread political de-prioritization. Within such an environment, the harms of hate are likely to be felt all the more acutely by victims within marginalized communities whose over-exposure to hostile behaviors and structural inequalities poses challenges which are insufficiently addressed within existing academic and policy frameworks.

This special issue of the Journal of Interpersonal Violence acknowledges the need for fresh lines of enquiry and seeks to promote a more nuanced understanding of issues which remain overlooked and under-explored. It offers fresh perspectives on both victims and perpetrators of violence at a time when physical and online hate continues to escalate across the world in the midst of multiple social, economic, and political crises. Within the context of hate studies and violence more generally, conceptual debates and policy developments are evolving, new lines of empirical enquiry are emerging, and academic literature dates rapidly. As such, contributions within this special issue provide an urgent wake-up call to ensure that scholars do not become settled within the comfort of what we already know.

Contributions to This Special Issue

In “The Ambivalence of Far-Right Women: Hate, Trauma, Gender and Neoliberalism in Contemporary Japan,” Yoshida employs a psychosocial approach to examine the role of gendered social structures in women’s decisions to participate in the far-right movement in Japan. Yoshida considers the complex life histories that can shape the trajectories of women and in doing so, is able to challenge the traditional narrative that positions far-right women as controlled and used by men. Indeed, Yoshida draws attention to histories of socioeconomic status and gender-based violence which can cause women to utilize far-right discourse as a means of projecting anger and trauma onto others.

In their article, “Lost in Translation? Applying the Hate Crime Concept to the Indian Context” Mohsin and Chakraborti propose a creative translation of the Westernized hate crime concept to the Indian context. By adopting a transnational approach, the authors support this translation, but do so with a level of caution and reflection that takes into account the complexities of violence within an Indian context such as caste systems, social stratification, institutional bias, and intersectionalities. To translate the hate crime concept, Mohsin and Chakraborti suggest that we should utilize the elasticity of the concept and employ this to the different forms of targeted violence legitimized within Indian institutions and structures. The authors also propose that Western-centric frameworks could be enhanced by engaging with the many under-explored forms of violence that are enacted outside of the parameters of the Western world.

In “Beyond the Binary: The Issue of Intra-minority Hostility and the Need to Challenge,” Stein et al reveal the under-investigated yet widespread antisemitism within the Canadian context. In this original contribution, the authors center the lived experiences of the Canadian Jewish community to offer an insight as to how contemporary online and offline discourses surrounding “Jewish privilege” are deeply embedded within historic antisemitic tropes of wealth, power, and control. Notably, Stein et al highlight that many respondents, especially community leaders, report increased confidence in the role of the police to protect and work with the Jewish community compared to other targeted groups.

Clarke’s article “Challenging the Binary Perpetrator/Victim Frameworks within Hate Studies: The Issue of Intra-Minority Hostility” offers a unique exploration of the hostilities that exist within and between minority communities. Drawing upon the experiences of new migrants and refugees living in a “super diverse” area of the UK, Clarke attends to “Intra-Minority” hostility to reveal hostilities that are perpetrated by and toward ethnic minority groups. By considering “Intra-Minority” hostility within the context of anti-immigrant rhetoric, the article encourages a wider conceptualization of hate crime that can account for all victims, including hostility toward “new arrivals” perpetrated by established ethnic minority communities.

In “‘Working ‘With’ Not ‘On’ Disabled People: The Role of Hate Crime Research Within the Community,” Burch reflects upon the openness of the research space, and the opportunity to work with victims of interpersonal violence by welcoming shared vulnerabilities and dependencies upon one another. In doing so, Burch encourages readers to think more creatively about the possibilities of hate crime research as an opportunity for working with victims of violence in collaborative ways. Such participatory approaches dismantle traditional research relations and importantly, can challenge the power imbalances and notions of vulnerability that are embedded within encounters of hostility.

In her article “Hating Women: A Constitution of Hate in Plain sight,” Brayson argues that misogyny is both hidden and explicitly present. Misogyny is both hyper-normalized within our society, yet hidden within the logic of neutral constitutional laws that privilege the white, middle-class, heteronormative, male figure. Within this rich conceptual exploration, Brayson reflects upon the values and tensions of including misogyny within the policy landscape of hate crime by engaging with a diversity of decolonial feminist theories. In doing so, Brayson encourages us to be open to scholarship across disciplines as a means of thinking about misogyny in new and helpful ways.

Finally, Kingdom and Winter present an analysis of the evolution of Ku Klux Klan online political activism in their article “Digital Reconstruction: A Critical Examination of the History and Adaptation of Ku Klux Klan Websites”. The authors employ qualitative analysis to reveal not only the content of websites, but also the processes, methods, and approaches utilized by creators. This analysis shows how networked technology has enabled the Klan to grow beyond their traditional regional or national boundaries and connect internationally, adapt to changing needs, conditions, and opportunities, as well as organize and mobilize offline. Such understanding could provide a unique contribution to responding to online extremist activity in the future.

Each of these articles presents powerful and timely insights, and each has been framed in a way which not only encourages empirical rigor but which facilitates dialog between academics, policymakers, and practitioners whose collective expertise is pivotal to the development of effective responses to hate incidents. Contributors to this special issue have dismantled common stereotypes and misperceptions which hamper our collective capacity to address contemporary expressions of hate and violence. In doing so, they draw from their research to identify “hidden” challenges which should be at the forefront of attempts to address the causes, effects, and prevention of all forms of violence. This call for reconfiguration is the unifying theme which runs through each article, and which paves the way for more nuanced analyses that offer new frameworks for responding to the diverse and changing patterns of violence. These are challenges which straddle disciplinary boundaries, geographical borders, and the physical/digital world, and which demand the international, intersectional, and inter-disciplinary perspectives evident within this special issue.

Author Biographies

Neil Chakraborti , PhD, is a professor in Criminology, Director of the Institute for Policy, and Co-Director of the Centre for Hate Studies at the University of Leicester. He has published extensively within the fields of hate crime, policing, and “othering,” and has been commissioned by numerous funding bodies including Amnesty International, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Leverhulme Trust to lead research studies which have shaped policy and scholarship. Neil is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Chair of the Research Advisory Group at the Howard League for Penal Reform and series editor of Palgrave Hate Studies . He has received awards for his work from a variety of sources, including the Royal Television Society, Learning on Screen, the President’s Award from the University of Leicester and the Hero of Leicestershire Award. He holds a diverse range of advisory positions which include roles with the Crown Prosecution Service, the Human Dignity Trust, the International Network for Hate Studies, Oxford University Press, and Protection Approaches.

Leah Burch , PhD, is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences and member of the Centre for Culture and Disability Studies at Liverpool Hope University. She has published widely within the fields of disability studies, hate crime, affect theory and sexual violence. Her first monograph, Disability and Everyday Hate was published in 2021 by Palgrave Macmillan, which examines the diverse ways in which disabled people understand, negotiate, and respond to disability hate crime within their day-to-day lives. Her research has been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Ministry of Justice and Home Office. Leah is a member of the British Society of Criminology Hate Crime Network, where she co-leads on postgraduate and early career research events. She actively works with key stakeholders, including Disabled People’s Organizations and the Disabled Police Association and holds advisory roles within the Crown Prosecution Service.

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to the authorship and/or publication of this article.

Funding: The author(s) received no financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article.

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The Historical Facts about Hate Crime in America The Social Worker’s Role in Victim Recovery and Community Restoration

Mitchell A. Kaplan
Marian M. Inguanzo
Restorative Justice
Social Work
Social Psychology

Introduction

The United States is currently experiencing one of the most significant crime resurgences motivated by social bias in decades. Research findings summarized in an April 2019 article published on Politfact.com provide substantial evidence that hate crime is on the rise in every major city across our nation ( Xu, 2019 ). The proliferation of bias-related crime in our society is creating a growing need for the implementation of strategic interventions designed to restore a sense of safety and stability to the daily life of individuals and communities affected by this form of anti-social behavior. The purpose of this article is to present an analysis of the psychological, social, and legislative consequences of bias-motivated crime and to discuss how social workers can use restorative justice intervention to provide services that can rehabilitate individuals and communities affected by the impact of such traumatic circumstances.

Social Factors that Define a Hate Crime

Bias-related criminal acts, known as hate crimes, have received multiple definitions in the criminal justice literature. The term was initially coined by a group of American journalists and policy advocates in the 1980s to define a series of criminal incidents directed at African-Americans, Asians, and Jews ( National Institute of Justice, 2018 ). The U.S. Department of Justice defines a hate crime as violent acts directed at an individual, family, group, or organization that attempt to intimidate based solely on race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual identity, and orientation or condition of disability. Research by Hamad ( 2017 ) summarized in a joint report released by the Centre for Youth and Criminal Justice at the University of Edinburgh, and the City of Edinburgh Council provides a similar definition of bias-related criminal acts. The report defines a hate crime as a criminal act motivated by malice or ill will against a particular social group with five protected characteristics under Scottish Law, which are race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity, and disability. In both definitions, the element that distinguishes a hate crime from other forms of criminal behavior is the bias motivation of the perpetrator (U.S. Department of Justice, n.d.; Hamad, 2017 ).

Although the term hate crime frequently appears in the criminal justice literature and has been consistently used by journalists to identify specific types of criminal acts, findings from research by Walters et al. ( 2016 ); and Roberts et al. ( 2013 ) indicate that despite its widespread use in the mainstream media the true definition of what constitutes a hate crime remains a debatable issue at best. Research reveals four benchmark characteristics that distinguish a hate crime from other types of criminal offenses. Among these characteristics is the fact that: 1) hate crimes are very often the product of more than one kind of prejudice, 2) hate crimes are defined by situational factors such as verbal abuse, physical harassment, and homophobia that are associated with the perpetrator, 3) hate crimes usually stem from localized neighborhood conflict situations where perpetrators launch a targeted campaign of abuse and violence against those members of the community who they view as outsiders with undesirable social characteristics, 4) hate crimes are more likely to occur in structured environments where community residents with more valued identity characteristics such as being White, male, and heterosexual have an advantaged social status over those residents with less valued minority group characteristics. The research suggests that incorporating discriminatory policies, procedures, and laws into the U.S. justice system has created a set of social conditions in our society that has given perpetrators of hate crime an enhanced sense of entitlement to act with impunity to victimize members of minority groups. It further suggests that there are different types and levels of prejudice that have a direct connection to hate crime as well as the complex relationships that exist between perpetrators and victims. Findings conclude that hate crimes are part of an ongoing victimization process with many social and psychological causes ( United States Department of Justice, Civil Rights Division (n.d.) ; Walters et al., 2016 ).

The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is a research tool used by the federal government to measure victim perceptions of criminal acts motivated by offender bias ( United States Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics (n.d.) ). To be classified as a bias-related crime in the NCVS, the victim must be able to present one of three types of tangible evidence that hate-motivated the offense. The victim must be able to prove that: 1) the offender used hate language as part of the attack, 2) the offender left a hate symbol at the scene of the incident, 3) the police investigation uncovered material evidence at the location of the experience that conclusively proves the offense was a hate crime. Some examples of criminal acts categorized as hate crimes are the burning of homes and businesses, harassment and destruction of religious property, cross burning, personal assaults, and homicide ( Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2017 ).

The significance of hate crimes as a growing social problem in the United States has been at the forefront of the political agenda of government officials and policymakers for decades. Public concern about the effects of hate violence on individuals and communities has increased substantially in recent years. According to the National Institute of Justice 49 states, presently have implemented laws that protect the rights of hate crime victims by requiring severe penalties for offenders. A review of findings cited in the Bureau of Justice Statistics reports published in 1997 through 1999 by Strom ( 2001 ) reveals that race is the most common factor motivating offenders who commit hate crimes. The data indicate that the vast majority of hate crimes are committed against persons of color, and thrill-seeking is the most common motive for these biased attacks ( McDevitt, Levin, & Bennett, 2002 ; See Table A1, Appendix A).

History of Hate Crime in America and its Legislative Outcomes

Hatred, born out of prejudice, has been a major social force that has motivated criminal acts since the dawn of civilization. The history of the United States contains several well-known examples of criminal behavior that involve violence, intimidation, and discrimination that target immigrants, people of color, and other individuals with social characteristics that set them apart from the mainstream culture such as skin color, language, national heritage, and sexual and religious practices ( Shively, 2005 ).

A review of historical records provides significant evidence that the perpetrators of social intolerance have utilized various methods to spread their message of hate to those they perceive as being different in some socially powerful way from the rest of society. According to the archives of the museum of crime online, one of the earliest examples of a criminal act motivated by religious prejudice can be traced to ancient times when the Roman Emperor Nero launched public campaigns of persecution against early Christians because of their spiritual practices ( History of Hate Crime, 2017 ).

In pre-colonial America of the 15 th century, early illustrations of criminal acts motivated by social intolerance are seen in the racial bias of the first European explores who carried out genocidal wars against Native Americans because they perceived them as socially and culturally inferior. Referred to as the Indian wars by historians, these genocidal attacks, combined with the deliberate spread of life-threatening diseases like smallpox, had a devastating impact on U.S. Native American populations for centuries. They destroyed some tribes and caused a drastic reduction in the community of others. The White settlers drove the survivors off their ancestral land onto government assigned reservations where their descendants are still feeling the effects of confinement in extreme poverty and lack of access to medical care and education to this day ( United to End Genocide, Atrocities against Native Americans, n.d. ).

Other more recent examples of hate crimes motivated by ethnic prejudice occurred in the early part of the 20 th century. The most notable of which took place in Germany before the start of the Second World War when Nazi party leader Adolf Hitler launched a public propaganda campaign against its Jewish population. Called Hitler’s final solution, the Nazi party’s political campaign of hate propaganda lead to violent acts of persecution and discrimination perpetrated against German Jews, denial of their fundamental human rights and citizenship status by the German government and ultimately fueled Hitler’s decision to eliminate the country’s Jewish population in concentration camps. The Holocaust represents one of history’s most extreme illustrations of social intolerance and racial bigotry against a subpopulation based on their ethnic and religious identity ( United to End Genocide, The Holocaust, n.d. ).

In the 1960s, at the height of the civil rights movement in the United States, civil rights activists received threats of violence from racial segregationist organizations such as the Ku Klux Klan dedicated to denying Blacks and other people of color their fundamental civil rights. Klan members utilized criminal activities such as racially motivated murder, physical assault, personal property destruction, and cross burning to spread their message of fear and hate throughout the south.

One of the most famous of these hate-inspired crimes occurred in Mississippi in 1964 when Klan members brutally murdered three civil rights workers James Earl Chaney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Police reaction to the murders and the federal court decisions that followed were both highly controversial and led to considerable public outcry over the inadequacy of punishment the defendants in the case received for such a severe criminal offense. Public protest over the outcome of this case and others like it resulted in the passage of the country’s first formal hate crimes law in 1968, which set a national standard for the conviction of felons who commit crimes based on racial prejudice and social intolerance ( This Day in History, n.d. ).

In the late 1990s, two high profile murder cases lead to the expansion of U.S. hate crime prevention laws. In 1998 a 21-year-old University of Wyoming student Mathew Shepard was attacked and left to die tied to a fence near Laramie by two young men, Aaron Mckinney and Russell Henderson, because he was gay. Shepard died in a Colorado hospital six days later from severe head trauma inflicted on him by the assailants during the incident. That same year a Black man James Byrd Jr. was murdered by three White men Shawn Berry, Lawrence Russell Brewer, and John King, in a racially motivated incident in Jasper, Texas. The two cases brought national attention to hate crimes prevention legislation at the state and federal level (Mathew Shepard Foundation, 2009). In October of 2009, the United States Congress, under the leadership of President Barack Obama, passed the Mathew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act ( Anti-Defamation League, 2009 ).

The legislation expanded the 1969 federal hate crimes law to include protection against criminal acts motivated by the victim’s sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability. It allows local law enforcement authorities to ask the courts to administer the maximum sentence of life in prison for criminal offenders convicted of hate crimes involving kidnapping, sexual assault, and murder. It also gives federal law enforcement authorities more extraordinary ability to engage in the investigation of hate crime incidents that local law enforcement authorities refuse to pursue and provides for increased federal funding to help state and local law enforcement agencies pay for the annual cost of investigating and prosecuting hate crimes ( USAToday.com , 2009 ).

Statistics from surveys conducted by anti-hate crime organizations such as the Anti-defamation League (ADL), the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, and the Klanwatch project, in combination with those from the Southern Poverty Law Center, provide substantial evidence that bias-related crimes have reached epidemic proportions nationwide ( Jacobs & Henry,1996 ). In 1990 Congress passed the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, which mandates the U.S. Department of Justice to collect crime data from law enforcement agencies across the United States and publish an annual summary of findings. The FBI became the lead agency in this coordinated effort and currently publishes hate crime statistics as part of its annual Uniform Crime Reporting System (UCR) (National Institute of Justice, 2010; See Table B1, Appendix B).

Evidence of the spread of incidents of bias-related criminal violence in the United States can also be found in the results of the National Crime Victimization Survey. NCVS data reveals that 191,000 bias-related crime incidents take place in the United States each year. Of those victimizations that occurred, only 44% were reported to the police, and law enforcement authorities validated just 20% as bias-related crimes ( Harlow, 2005 ). The rising tide of bias-related criminal violence continues to escalate throughout the country despite legislative action to curtail such activity at the state and federal level (See Table C1, Appendix C).

Several federal grand jury court decisions in 2014 provide significant transparent evidence that bias-related violence is still very much a part of the American landscape. In April 2014, a federal grand jury issued a two-count indictment against a man in Albuquerque, New Mexico, for anti-semitic threats against a Jewish woman who owned the Nosh Jewish Delicatessen and Bakery. In July 2014, acting Assistant Attorney General Jocelyn Samuels of the U.S. Department of Justice and U.S. Attorney Gregory K. Davis for the Southern District of Mississippi announced that a federal grand jury issued indictments against four young Mississippi residents for conspiracy to commit hate crimes against African-Americans in Jackson Mississippi. The four young White defendants in the case along with six other co-conspirators were found guilty in federal court of racially motivated assault. Two months later, in September 2014, a former member of the Ku Klux Klan pleaded guilty in federal court for his role in a cross burning in front of the home of an interracial family in Tennessee. In November of that same year, a Texas man was given a 15-year prison sentence for luring a young gay man to his home where he brutally assaulted him because of his sexual orientation. These successful investigations and others like them represent that hate crime remains a top priority of the FBI’s civil rights program (FBI Hate Crime Statistics, 2014).

The 2016 election had a significant impact on hate crime in America. Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again campaign rhetoric of hate propaganda against Muslim and Latino immigrants, African Americans, Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer individuals, and persons with disabilities has led to increased public distrust of these groups. Media sources such as CNN have reported that although the president offered a general condemnation of hate violence and social bigotry in a speech before a joint session of Congress in 2017, his administration’s actions tell another story ( Iyer, 2017 ). The administration’s policies of criminalization and social stereotyping that target immigrants, Muslims, and people of color through walls, travel bans, and raids have been the primary motivating factor responsible for the recent surge in the number of bias-related attacks against these groups by White supremacist and neo-Nazi extremist organizations experiencing a new sense of empowerment from the Trump presidency. These policies have been responsible for promoting a social climate of hate in our nation and has sent a strong message to the American public that certain groups do not belong in this country ( CNN.com , 2017 ).

Bias-related attacks against people of color and immigrants by right-wing domestic terrorists since Trump’s election provide substantial evidence of an expanding national trend. The recent murders of two protesters at a Black Lives Matter rally in Kenosha, Wisconsin, in August of 2020 by 17-year-old White nationalist militia member Kyle Rittenhouse is just the latest example of violence motivated by hate that is fast becoming a legitimized form of racial backlash by Trump supporting alt-right gun toting vigilantes in our country. The exploitation of Islamic attacks in Europe and the United States by right-wing political conservatives in the Trump administration and the media have sparked a dramatic increase in the number of anti-Muslim hate crimes (See Table D1, Appendix D).

Statistics compiled in the FBI’s 2016 hate crime report indicate that since the election, bias-related crimes against African Americans have risen by more than 50% on a nationwide scale, making them one of the most frequent targets of racially motivated attacks in the country ( Muhammad, 2017 ; Final Call.com , 2017 ). The statistics summarized in the FBI’s 2016 uniform crime report also provide strong evidence of the connection between the post-election increase in hate crimes and the Trump administration’s message of racial, ancestral, and religious propaganda (See Table E1, Appendix E).

Analysis of uniform crime data compiled by the FBI over the past two decades also suggests that for a variety of technical reasons, the level of hate crime incidents reported to law enforcement authorities represents at best an underestimate of the actual number of bias-related crimes that take place in this country each year ( U.S. Department of Justice, 2017 ). Findings suggest that hate crime in America has risen significantly in recent years to 260,000 incidents annually, a figure that is 25 to 40 times higher than the crime statistics reported by the FBI (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2016).

Recent data in a SPLC report published in 2019 provides further evidence of the correlation between Trump’s bias rhetoric and the rise of ultra-right-wing White nationalist hate groups in the United States. SPLC findings reveal a significant post-election increase in active hate groups in the U.S. from 784 in 2014 to 1,020 in 2018, a period directly linked to Trump’s election campaign and his first two years in office ( Mclean & Martin, 2019 ).

Research by Levin, Grisham, & Nolan ( 2018 ) provides further supportive evidence of the link between Trump administration statements during the 2016 campaign and the recent surge in hate crimes in major U.S. cities across the country. Similar results were revealed in a recent University of North Texas study by Branton, Martinez-Ebers, and Feinberg ( 2019 ), which showed a 226% spike in hate crimes in counties that hosted the Trump campaign rallies in 2016. The research also highlights the fact that Trump pre and post-election bias statements have been a significant catalyst for the surge in White nationalist extremist attacks such as the mass shootings that occurred at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburg in 2018 and at a Muslim mosque in New Zealand in 2019 (Washington Post, 2019, March).

In addition to the post-election hate rhetoric of the Trump administration, studies indicate that the technology of the Internet is currently playing a significant role in the spread of prejudice associated with hate crime. Research on the effects of the utilization of online social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter on the recent uptick in bias-related criminal activity reveals that the Internet creates an enabling environment for offenders to use hate speech as a vehicle for the promotion of prejudice against people of color, persons with marginalized social status because of their sexual orientation or religious group membership, women, and immigrants ( Cammaerts, 2007 ; Erjavec & Kovačič ( 2012 ); Flores-Yeffal et al. ( 2011 ); Irvine ( 2006 ); Perry & Olsson ( 2009 ); Pollock ( 2006 ); Serafimovska & Markovik, ( 2011 ). Findings provide evidence that the use of cyber-technologies such as email, web sites, and blogs is allowing individuals who are members of hate movements to expand the reach of their online harassment and intimidation campaigns and collective identity internationally in ways that facilitate the formation of a global racist subculture that contributes to the rise of violence connected to hate crime ( Rolhfing, 2015 ).

The description of historical events in this review presents significant evidence that illustrates how the seeds of prejudice have developed into the violence known as a hate crime in American society through the centuries. Criminologists and historians who have studied the consequences of criminal behavior based on bias for decades argue that while the spread of crime fueled by hate is nothing new in our culture, what is new is the changing national response of legislative officials, law enforcement agencies, and mental health professionals to criminal incidents of this nature. The following sections of this article present an analysis of the psychological and social effects of hate crime on community residents and examine how social workers can apply the intervention techniques of the restorative justice model to help victims recover from the aftermath of these word type of bias-motivated incidents.

The Impact of Hate Crime on the Victim and Society

Research documented in the mental health literature provides substantial evidence that bias-related crimes have a significant psychological and social impact on victims, communities, and society. Findings from a study by Langner ( 2008 ) indicate that hate crimes have more devastating effects on victims than other criminal offenses. The attack is motivated by a core aspect of the individual’s identity. A review of research on the psychological effects of hate crime violence on victims by Dzelme ( 2008 ) highlights the fact that hate crimes represent a severe threat to the physical and mental safety of victims. Other studies suggest that victims of hate crime attacks suffer more extreme mental health consequences resulting directly from the victimization ( Herek, Gillis, Cogan, & Glunt, 1997 ; D’Aguelli & Grossman, 2001 ; Iganski, 2008 , & 2001 ; Perry, 2003 ). According to the American Psychological Association, hate crimes inflict psychological damage on victims that result in the development of various physical and emotional symptoms that harm the lives of those who experience them and often become chronic. Research by Herman ( 1995 ) substantiates this point of view. The study revealed that traumatized survivors of hate crime attacks frequently report experiencing long-lasting physiological symptoms such as tremors, choking, and chronic nausea caused by the psychological stress associated with the incident.

APA research acknowledges that the traumatic stress and fear of harm stemming from a hate crime can cause victims to develop chronic emotional symptoms such as anxiety disorders that can inhibit their ability to make important life choices and shatters their sense of personal security. A study by the Hate Crimes Research Network (2007) provides substantial evidence that bias-motivated crimes cause victims to develop severe emotional scares associated with the psychological trauma of the attack. The research suggests that the most common psychological reactions to this type of victimization are intense feelings of personal hurt and betrayal, powerlessness, isolation, sadness, and suspicion. Findings further suggest that high levels of persistent fear about one’s safety and that of one’s family, as well as a heightened sense of injustice and loss of faith in law enforcement officers and the criminal justice system as a whole, are all common reactions that accompany the aftermath of a hate crime. Based on the data analysis, the investigators conclude that while some psychological reactions to hate crime are temporary, others have more lasting consequences for the day to day social interaction of those most affected by the trauma of victimization. Hate crime victims who have suffered trauma due to their interaction with a perpetrator will adopt coping strategies designed to enhance their sense of safety and protect themselves from the possibility of a future attack. Some of the most common coping strategies that hate crime victims adopt are dressing in ways that attract less public attention, social withdrawal from all but a select group of friends and associates, and self-imposed restrictions on interactions with others both in person and on the telephone due to a reduced sense of safety.

Research by Herek and Berill ( 1992 ) reveals that secondary victimization exacerbates the psychological trauma of a hate crime attack because institutions whose job it is to help individuals recover often impose their own biases and blame upon victims. They argue that the fear of being mistreated by outsiders represents one of the primary reasons that many hate crime victims do not report the incident and do not seek treatment designed to help them cope with the trauma. For example, research summarized in a report by the American Psychological Association found that only one-third of hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation bias against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender individuals in the United States are reported to law enforcement authorities. APA findings suggest that the main reason that LGBTQ individuals fail to report hate crimes against them stems from fear of future contact with perpetrators and possible bias against them by the criminal justice system because of their group membership. The study concluded that hate crimes against LGBTQ individuals often go unreported to police authorities because of the difficulties of proving the attack was bias-related because of the victim’s sexual orientation.

Psychological studies of hate crimes indicate that the emotional effects of this type of attack are not limited to the interpersonal dynamics of the victim’s experience; they also extend into the community where the incident took place. Research suggests that hate crimes trigger shockwaves of intense fear throughout communities, which shatters residents’ sense of personal safety, security, and well-being. In his book, Bloody Words Hate and Free Speech , published in 2000, Canadian author David Matas acknowledges the fact that a hate crime is not just an assault that violates the sanctity of the individual, but the community as well. Unlike other crimes, hate crimes have a particularly devastating impact on communities because perpetrators use the incident as a platform to send a message that individuals belonging to certain racial, ethnic, and religious groups are despised, devalued, and unwelcome in particular neighborhoods, communities, schools, and workplaces ( American Psychological Association, 1998 ). APA research further suggests that hate crimes can result in victim rejection of the aspect of themselves that made them the target of the attack or associating a core part of their identity with fear, loss, and vulnerability (Cogan, 2002, p. 178).

The research cited in this article strongly suggests that the psychosocial and cultural after-effects of hate crime on victims and communities leave indelible marks on the minds of those targeted that can last for generations. The stories passed down by survivors become part of the cultural heritage of outsiders and remain a constant reminder of the horrors of the past experienced by members of their community. Classic examples of this are found in the cultural history of Jewish and African Americans, where the horrors of the Nazi Holocaust and the inhumanity of southern slavery remain a fixture in the minds of the descendants of those who experienced these traumatic events long ago. For decades leaders in both of these communities have espoused that the painful memory of these dark days will never be forgotten. This ideology still reverberates throughout the Black community in America to this day, especially in urban areas where the remnants of racial bias exert a strong influence on the day to day interaction between community members and the police related to criminal perception ( Office of Justice Programs, n.d. ).

Restorative Justice and Hate Crime – What Social Work Professionals Need to Know

As discussed earlier in this article, crimes motivated by social intolerance and racial bigotry have reached epidemic proportions in American society. Research shows that crimes of this nature have devastating effects on victims and communities that require intervention to promote healing and the re-establishment of social order, safety, and security. As helping professionals, social workers working for victim service programs are often called upon to assist hate crime victims to connect with services that can help them achieve these goals.

One social justice approach to hate crime rehabilitation that is gaining significant support from a growing number of social work, public policy, and law enforcement professionals is restorative justice. The term restorative justice has received a broad range of definitions in the criminal justice literature. It is found in the writing of several ancient European cultures dating back more than a century. According to John Braithwaite, distinguished professor of criminology at Australian National University, restorative justice is defined as “a process where all stakeholders have an opportunity to discuss how they have been affected by the injustice and decide what should be done to repair the harm” ( Braithwaite, 2004: 28 ). Dr. Braithwaite argues that unlike other social justice approaches to crime that place the primary responsibility for litigation on the legal system, restorative justice shifts the focus of accountability to citizens in the community who must decide the best way to heal the pain caused by the incident. Dr. Carolyn Boyes-Watson of Suffolk University’s Center for Restorative Justice takes the concept a step further by defining restorative justice as “ a growing social movement to institutionalize peaceful approaches to harm, problem-solving and violations of legal and human rights . ”( Suffolk University, Center for Restorative Justice, 2019, para. 1 ). She argues that restorative justice attempts to meet the needs of victims, offenders, and affected communities by engaging all three factions in a balanced approach to the healing process. In essence, the process of restorative justice seeks to build partnerships that reestablish mutual responsibility for constructive responses to wrongdoing within communities, promote solutions that have the potential to repair, reconcile, and rebuild relationships, and preserve the safety and dignity of all ( Boyes-Watson, 2014 ).

Inspired by the work of criminologist Dr. Howard Zehr, founder of the restorative justice movement in the United States in the 1970s, the philosophical foundation that underlies the practice of restorative justice is built on the premise that crime represents a violation of people and relationships not just a violation of the law ( Zehr, 1990 ). Therefore it requires a restorative process that incorporates the principles and values associated with the voluntary community response to crime, truth-telling, and face to face encounters ( Llewellyn & Howse, 1999 ). In the restorative justice process, victims can speak directly to offenders about the harm they have caused them with the broader community’s support. Victims and offenders engage in a mutual dialogue centered around developing a restitution agreement that satisfies both parties and the community in which the crime took place. Five core principals comprise the paradigm upon which the values and practices of restorative justice are built. These are:

The victim is central to the criminal justice process through increased involvement and services
Offenders are held directly accountable to the person and community that they victimize
The entire community is engaged in holding the offender accountable and for promoting a healing response that encompasses the needs of victims, offenders, and the community as a whole
Restorative justice places emphasis on offender restitution to victims in the form of making amends for their criminal behavior whenever possible, rather than focusing on the severity of punishment common in more traditional methods of justice
The community recognizes and takes responsibility for the social conditions that contributed to the intolerance and hate that precipitated the criminal behavior ( Umbreit, Lewis, & Burns, 2003 ).

Criminologists who have studied the relationship between restorative justice and hate crime argue that a substantial knowledge gap exists in public understanding of how the use of this type of practice can be useful in providing restitution to individuals and communities that have been victimized. Research by Chakraborti ( 2010 ) and Walters (2012) reveals two major reasons for the skepticism of policymakers associated with the relationship of restorative justice practice to hate crime. First, hate crime represents a select category of criminal behavior that has traditionally been treated as a grey area for restorative practices by criminal justice professionals because of the imbalance of power in the victim-offender relationship. Some of them believe that crimes committed by offenders motivated by racial bigotry will not respond well to community-based approaches to restitution. There is the potential for those involved in the initial attack to suffer further victimization should they come into direct contact with the offender.

Second, the concept of restoration of the status quo is theoretically abstract. Therefore it does not initially align itself with the reality of the impact that hate crimes have on the victim and the community. A classic example that illustrates this is the increase in the number of hate crimes against Muslim Americans after the September 11 th , 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Scholars have noted that the xenophobic nature of this type of bias-related violence against Muslim Americans in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks was triggered primarily by the fact those targeted shared or were perceived as sharing the same ancestry and religious background as the al-Queda hijackers who carried out the attacks.

Despite the skepticism of some lawmakers about the applicability of restorative justice as an effective strategy for healing the harm caused by hate crime, most would agree that this approach of responsible involvement of victims, perpetrators, and the community in the restitution process, does represent a viable alternative to the more traditional forms of punitive response to offender rehabilitation within the current system ( Bazemore, 1999 ). Research suggests that offender rehabilitation programs that incorporate restorative justice practices have a higher overall level of victim and offender satisfaction, increased offender compliance with restitution, and a decreased level of offender recidivism compared to programs utilizing more standardized methods ( Latimer, Dowden, & Muise 2005 ). Service professionals with a genuine concern for social justice have sought to embrace restoration practices to assist victims and communities in dealing with the social challenges brought about by bias-motivated crimes.

As a professional group with a strong commitment to social justice ideals, social workers have taken a leadership role in applying restorative justice practices in communities affected by hate crime. A review of the literature on the social worker’s role in the restorative justice process by Gunz and Grant ( 2009 ) reveals that like other helping professionals that advocate for the rights of individuals and families victimized by bias-motivated crime, social workers adhere to a set of core values that influence their practice decisions. Since its inception two centuries ago, the core values of service, social justice, dignity and worth of the person, integrity, competence, and the importance of relationships have been the foundation that has guided the mission of the social work profession. Based on this code of ethics, social workers seek to resolve injustice through a strategic process of social change.

Although the concept of restorative justice did not evolve directly from the field of social work, criminal justice specialists and social workers that practice these methods share a common ground regarding their mission to help victims and communities recover from the after-effects of a hate crime. Drawing on the pioneering work of Dr. Howard Zehr, Professor Katherine Van Wormer of the University of Northern Iowa School of Social Work, argues that finding methods of restorative practice that humanize the criminal justice process by holding offenders accountable for the harm they do to others as a result of committing hate crimes is an extremely challenging task for social work professionals who want to implement social justice intervention programs in affected communities. Van Wormer ( 2001 ) presents a modified version of the restorative justice paradigm known as the strengths-restorative model. The model is based on the original restorative justice principals with two major modifications. The first is the state’s responsibility to oversee the judicial process to ensure that justice is carried out, and the rights of victims are protected. The second is the elimination of the integrative approach of shaming victims and offenders for crimes committed that exists within the present system of criminal justice.

Van Wormer ( 2001 ) argues that the two basic concepts of the strengths-restorative approach can be useful in assisting social workers in revising their thinking about the development of effective corrective strategies that are consistent with the profession’s underlying mission of social justice, participant planning, and implementation of restorative community justice initiatives. She further contends that restorative justice is an effective method of repairing the physical and psychological harm done to the offender by the traditional system of punitive justice while at the same time helping the person to take responsibility for his or her actions that have harmed the community. She describes the restorative justice process as “a practice that requires social institutions to work toward repairing the damage incurred by those who have been injured while reintegrating perpetrators into society” ( Van Wormer, 2002, p. 16 ). Those individuals and family members who have been the most directly affected by the crime should be given the voluntary opportunity to participate in response to it ( Tschudi, & Reichelt, 2004 ). Research conducted by Van Wormer and Bednar ( 2002 ) provides further evidence of applying strengths-based restorative justice principles to social work practice. The study suggests that unlike more traditional two-dimensional methods of justice, the strengths-based restorative approach utilizes the positive capabilities and characteristics of clients as a vehicle to promote coping and social change. Latimer, Dowden, and Muise ( 2005 ) take the discussion a step further by pointing out that restorative practices can substantially reduce the long-term effects of victimization and restore and strengthen the aggregate well being of communities affected by hate crime.

Based on the results of research that supports the application of methods of conflict mediation to crime by Umbreit, Coates, and Vos ( 2004 ), Van Wormer argues that there are three methods of restorative justice practice that social workers can use to help individuals and communities recover from the traumatic effects of hate crime. These methods are victim/offender mediation, family group conferencing, and peacemaking circles.

Originating in Canada in the early 1970s as part of an experimental alternative court sanctioning program, victim/offender mediation is a process whereby victims and offenders are brought together in a safe, structured environment to engage in a guided mediator led session about crime ( Peachey, 1989 ). The primary focus of these mediation sessions is to allow hate crime victims and perpetrators the opportunity to confront each other to talk about the physical, psychological, and financial harm that the incident has brought into their lives. Mediation sessions offer perpetrators a chance to take direct responsibility for their actions and to develop a mutually acceptable plan of restitution that can adequately address the harm caused by the crime ( U.S. Department of Justice online Notebook, 2007 ).

Victim/offender mediation programs have received national recognition from government law enforcement agencies and nonprofit legal advocacy groups throughout the country and abroad. Surveys conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice reveal more than 290 victims/offender mediation programs operating in the United States and more than 500 in Europe ( U.S. Department of Justice online Notebook, 2007 ).

Family Group Conferencing is a restorative justice practice that originated in New Zealand centuries ago and has been adopted by law enforcement agencies, schools, and probation facilities for juvenile offense cases throughout the United States ( Burford & Pennell, 2000 ). The approach extends routine support to juvenile offenders and victims through a dialogue platform of structured mediation that incorporates family members, social workers, law enforcement officials, and other community members into the formal process of restitution. Like victim/offender mediation, family group conferencing emphasizes offender responsibility for their criminal actions and changes the anti-social behaviors that harmed the victim. It also provides community members with the opportunity to collectively decide the offender’s fate regarding restorative measures appropriate to make amends for the crime committed ( U.S. Department of Justice online Notebook, 2007 ). Dr. Marilyn Armour, the director of the Institue for Restorative Justice and Dialogue at the University of Texas at Austin School of Social Work, argues that restorative practices such as FGC play an essential role in offender community care by building understanding and providing the accused felon with the opportunity to reenter the community as a restored member of society ( Armour, 2012 ).

Further empirical evidence of the effectiveness of the family group conferencing initiative on juvenile offenders is found in the results of research by Maxwell and Morris ( 1993 ). The data revealed that family members who participated in family group conferencing sessions in New Zealand were more motivated to participate in the criminal justice process than those who participated in more standardized justice procedures. The research also revealed that most victims, offenders, and families that took part in the conferencing process reported that they found it helpful. Similar results were found in preliminary evaluations of programs in the United States utilizing restorative justice practice. The assessment data revealed high levels of victim satisfaction with the family group conferencing process and high offender compliance rates with restitutive agreements reached due to these conferences. Service professionals who use the family group conferencing initiative believe that it represents a practical approach to helping crime victims reduce their fears and assist communities in building skills in conflict resolution and participatory decision-making.

Peacemaking circles, also referred to as sentencing circles in the social work literature, is an intervention of restorative justice practice that has its roots in the aboriginal and Navajo Indian traditions of community-based conflict resolution ( Boyes-Watson, 2005 ). Like family group conferencing, peacemaking circles focus on repairing the harm caused by crime with a broader emphasis on the larger community’s engagement in the process ( Armour, 2012 ). Some scholars have described peacemaking circles as the most inclusive of all the three methods of restorative justice practice ( Van Ness, 2004 ).

Peacemaking circles involve the inclusion of all interested parties in the healing process. These include victims, offenders, families, friends, community members, and a professional facilitator or circle keeper who acts as the unbiased mediator of the criminal offense group discussion. Participation is voluntary and noncoercive. Mediators use an object called a talking piece, which is passed around to each member of the support circle to ensure that all participating parties have an opportunity to be heard. Peacemaking circles build community and adhere to the principles of victim/offender support and accountability ( Liles, 2002 ).

Like other forms of group-based restorative practice, peacemaking circles are heavily reliant on shared leadership and consensus-based decision-making to guide the development of the restitution process. Leading experts in restorative procedures such as Dr. Marilyn Armour argue that as an emerging restitution strategy, peacemaking circles have a broad range of applications in specific criminal justice settings. For example, peacemaking circles have been integrated into prison systems to create a restorative dialogue between crime victims and high-risk offenders.

Armour points out that due to the high level of adaptability and effectiveness of restorative justice practices, it is not surprising that they are emerging as the norm in offender rehabilitation programs across the country. Since the core values of restorative justice practice strongly coincide with those of the social work profession, it seems logical to assume that these initiatives would make a useful tool for social workers to use in the battle against hate crime at both the individual and community level.

However, despite the expert opinion that supports the belief that restorative justice practices represent a useful tool that social workers can utilize to heal the harm caused by hate crime, there is little empirical evidence in the literature that links the social worker’s role to the restorative justice process ( Gunz & Grant, 2009 ). A comprehensive analysis of eighty peer-reviewed social work articles by the authors identifies some specific reasons for this gap. They argue that it is incredibly challenging to evaluate the long and short-term outcomes of offender rehabilitation programs that use restorative practices because of the unique structure and organization of each program and the level of participant involvement. They also point out that outcome-based studies in the literature contain few examples of standardized assessment instruments that can accurately measure victim satisfaction scores related to restorative practice with a high degree of consistency or reliability. The authors further suggest that one of the most significant obstacles to the practical evaluation of offender rehabilitation programs that utilize restorative justice initiatives is the fact many professionals doing the research lack sufficient education and training in restorative justice principles and practices, which makes it difficult for them to apply objective understanding to the subjective meaning of program outcomes.

Gunz and Grant ( 2009 ) conclude that although the meaning of restorative justice outcomes has been substantially addressed in studies in the criminal justice literature, social work educators have written little about restorative justice practice related to social work education and the profession. This has created a knowledge gap for social work practitioners and students that needs to be addressed by including professional training in restorative justice principles and practices in social work education programs and research that will give social workers a more substantial presence in the restorative justice field.

Using the Restorative Justice Model to Provide Social Services to Hate Crime Survivors

One of the most significant challenges that survivors of violent crime face when they seek restitution for the harm they have suffered, is how to make the criminal justice system in the United States more responsive to the needs and interests of victims. As community organization specialists, social workers play a pivotal role in this process by developing partnerships with community-based organizations, police departments, and the court system. These partnerships enable them to advocate for increased participation of their clients who have been victimized by a crime in the criminal justice process. One of the strategic methods that social workers are using to accomplish this goal is adopting the principles of restorative justice into their clinical service programs.

As discussed earlier in this article, restorative justice programs view crime as a violation of people and relationships that harm both the victim and the broader community ( Zehr, 2002 ). Results of meta-analyses of studies in the criminal justice literature evaluating the effectiveness of juvenile offender programs that utilize restorative justice principles by ( Livingstone, Macdonald, & Carr 2013 ; Wilson et al., 2017 ; Wong et al., 2016 ) reveal that youth offenders who participated in rehabilitation programs that incorporate restorative justice interventions such as victim-offender mediation, family group conferencing, and sentencing circles had more positive outcomes in terms of offender accountability along with a greater willingness of offenders to make restitution to victims their actions may have harmed. Results further revealed that youth involved in juvenile justice programs that implemented restorative justice interventions experienced a greater level of overall satisfaction with the fairness of the criminal justice system because of their ability to fully participate in the restitution process ( Wilson et al., 2017 ).

Although some members of the service provider community have voiced criticism of offender rehabilitation programs that use the restorative justice model to provide clinical services to adult and juvenile offenders, these programs are never less gaining widespread acceptance among the majority of service professionals in the field of criminal justice reform and have subsequently been expanding throughout the United States for several years. Two such promising rehabilitation programs that utilize the restorative justice model as part of their direct service approach are the Jury of Peers program in New York City and the Teen Court program in Los Angeles. Both programs provide former juvenile offenders with supervised training and an opportunity to help their peers by becoming presiding judges on cases that involve juvenile offenses such as bullying, assault, and theft.

Public officials like Mayor Bill de Blasio, who have evaluated the effectiveness of peer assistance programs such as these, have pointed out that the programs give former juvenile offenders a chance to see themselves as active participants in the justice process and enables them to gain a broader understanding of how the system works. David S. Wesley presiding judge of the Los Angeles Superior Court has expressed a similar view of offender rehabilitation programs that use the peer assistance model. He believes that having juvenile offenders plead their case before a jury of their peers is a much more effective way of avoiding future contacts with the law than more traditional punitive measures ( Jaafari, 2018 ). Offender rehabilitation programs that use the restorative justice approach to offender restitution are just two examples of innovative service programs that are gaining popularity among youth at-risk across the nation and have been adopted by social workers to assist victims of hate crime.

In addition to connecting clients affected by hate crime with direct services, social workers can also refer them to mental health facilities for treatment services designed to help them cope with the post-traumatic effects of the incident. Common post-traumatic treatment modalities that mental health professionals use with victims of hate crime include stress debriefing, eye movement desensitization, and reprocessing training. In her article “Psychotherapy Treatment for PTSD,” Staggs ( 2018 ) suggests that trauma-focused cognitive behavior therapy that utilizes desensitization and reprocessing techniques is one of the most effective therapeutic methods of helping individuals and families to understand and cope with the emotional and behavioral difficulties that accompany a traumatic incident such as a hate crime.

According to Dr. Steven Harmom, President of Antioch Group Incorporated, a Christian counseling and psychological service, the treatment of post-traumatic symptoms of hate crime can be challenging at times for outpatient mental health providers because evidence that the individual has been victimized only surfaces as a result of history taking for other psychological disorders such as depression. Therefore he recommends that questions to detect hate crime should be made a standard part of the screening process at every outpatient emergency medical department across the country. He further suggests that if hate crime victims require additional long-term support and care beyond that of office-based treatment, social workers should refer them to appropriate support organization such as B’nai Brith, the NAACP, the American Arab anti-discrimination committee, the Mexican-American Legal Defense Fund, and the Asian Society for assistance ( Hate Crimes First Facts, n.d. ).

Providing treatment referral and support services is just one of several practical things that social workers can do to assist clients in recovering from the after-effects of a hate crime. Another approach is for social workers to outreach to community-based organizations such as schools, religious institutions, and law enforcement agencies to implement hate crime prevention strategies. For example, social workers can outreach to teachers and parent organizations in the public school system to implement peer education programs that teach children about bias awareness and the significance of respecting the social and cultural differences of others around them in the school environment. Social workers and teachers participating in the school-based peer education programs can also instruct students about their responsibility to offer support to their classmates who have been the victim of a bias-motivated attack.

At the community level, social workers can work with law enforcement agencies and religious institutions such as churches, synagogues, and mosques to hold public meetings and workshops that educate community members about the importance of rejecting social and religious stereotypes of individuals who are viewed as outsiders by the mainstream culture. Social workers can also work collectively with state and local officials and community groups to advocate for legislation that increases government funding for anti-violence programs to prevent hate crime.

A classic illustration of the need for legislative change related to racially motivated hate crime is found in the recent increase in gun violence responsible for many mass murders across the United States. In response, the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) released a public statement in 2015 containing a series of public policy recommendations that the organization believes if implemented could substantially reduce or eliminate the spread of racism, gun violence, and mental illness connected to hate crime ( NASW, 2015 ). The NASW recommendations outline a stepwise response to conditions that cause tragedies such as those that recently occurred at a Black Methodist Church in Charleston, South Carolina and a public school in Parkland, Florida: The stepwise response includes the following changes to existing policy related to racially motivated hate violence:

Passage of sensible and enforceable national gun control legislation that includes waiting periods for background checks and placing restrictions on the sale and advertisement of high capacity automatic and semi-automatic weapons by stores and in magazines;
Passage of mental health legislation, such as the Mental Health First Act of 2015, which seeks to expand access to both preventive and ongoing mental health intervention and treatment services for average citizens;
Urging the U.S. Department of Justice to become more vigilant in their monitoring of the activities of hate groups such as the Council for Conservative Citizens and private citizen militia groups around the country;
Encourage our nation’s citizens to take an active role in the peaceful confrontation of racism at both the individual and institutional levels. They should also encourage our congressional officials to push for the passage of legislation such as the End Racial Profiling Act and the enactment of national hate crime laws in combination with the elimination of system-wide racial disparities.

In summary, the research presented in this article provides substantial evidence that bias-motivated crime has become a major social problem in American society that needs an adequate response from political officials, law enforcement agencies, and professionals in the social service and mental health community. As service providers, social workers can utilize the intervention techniques of the restorative justice model of restitution to create rehabilitation programs that inspire offenders who have committed bias-motivated crimes to atone for the harm their criminal actions have caused victims and communities through a process of professionally facilitated non-judgemental mediation that promotes offender accountability and forgiveness rather than punishment. Restorative justice programs represent an effective alternative to more traditional approaches to dealing with offenders who have committed bias-motivated attacks against marginalized groups in our culture. The growing national acceptance of these programs among service providers is proof that they are workable solutions that social workers can implement to help victims recover and communities to rebuild after the violence brought about by a hate crime.

Additional File

The additional file for this article can be found as follows:

U.S. Hate Crime Statistics Reported to the FBI 1997–2016. DOI: https://doi.org/10.33972/jhs.147.s1

Competing Interests

The research presented in this article is the product of an independent scholarly analysis of the subject matter by the authors Dr. Mitchell A. Kaplan and Ms. Marian M. Inguanzo LMSW without the formal support of federal or private funding. The work was not based on a condition of employment. Therefore no competing interest exists on the part of any organization or institution regarding the professional publication of this work under current circumstances.

Author Information

Mitchell A. Kaplan is a certified professional sociological practitioner in New York City. He received his doctorate in Sociology from the City University of New York Graduate Center. He was also the recipient of a Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Dr. Kaplan has spent the last 33 years of his professional career working as a research scientist and consultant for several non-profit and city government agencies across the social service and public health spectrum. His articles and reviews have been featured in professional journals on substance abuse treatment, vocational rehabilitation, opioid abuse, and chronic pain, healthcare policy, criminal justice reform, global aging, and regional history, as well as academic textbooks, magazines on higher education and cultural healing in the Hispanic community, and in New York newspapers. Dr. Kaplan can be contacted at his email address [email protected] .

Marian M. Inguanzo is a licensed social worker currently working in New York City. She received her MSW from Hunter College Graduate School of Social Work. Ms. Inguanzo has spent the last 25 years of her professional career as an employee of community-based social service agencies implementing innovative programs that provide essential services across the public health system. Her articles have been featured in professional journals on social work practice, magazines on Hispanic higher education, and New York newspapers. Ms. Inguanzo has been a frequent presenter at national and international social work education conferences. She has also played an instrumental role in inspiring critical service initiatives at the community level committed to assisting underserved minority populations at-risk in the United States and East Africa. Her efforts have received recognition and praise from political officials, healthcare providers, and Non-government organizations (NGO’s) whose communities have benefited from these service programs.

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Anti-Asian Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the Reproduction of Inequality

Angela r gover, shannon b harper, lynn langton.

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Received 2020 May 10; Accepted 2020 Jun 11; Issue date 2020.

This article is made available via the PMC Open Access Subset for unrestricted research re-use and secondary analysis in any form or by any means with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are granted for the duration of the World Health Organization (WHO) declaration of COVID-19 as a global pandemic.

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) is believed to have emerged in Wuhan, China in late December 2019 and began rapidly spreading around the globe throughout the spring months of 2020. As COVID-19 proliferated across the United States, Asian Americans reported a surge in racially motivated hate crimes involving physical violence and harassment. Throughout history, pandemic-related health crises have been associated with the stigmatization and “othering” of people of Asian descent. Asian Americans have experienced verbal and physical violence motivated by individual-level racism and xenophobia from the time they arrived in America in the late 1700s up until the present day. At the institutional level, the state has often implicitly reinforced, encouraged, and perpetuated this violence through bigoted rhetoric and exclusionary policies. COVID-19 has enabled the spread of racism and created national insecurity, fear of foreigners, and general xenophobia, which may be related to the increase in anti-Asian hate crimes during the pandemic. We examine how these crimes – situated in historically entrenched and intersecting individual-level and institutional-level racism and xenophobia – have operated to “other” Asian Americans and reproduce inequality.

Keywords: Hate crime, COVID-19, Coronavirus, Pandemic, Asian American, Asian

Introduction

“ I have seen this incredible seesaw effect. We can go back to the turn of the century, when Chinese were the only people to be legally excluded from this country because people were so fearful of the jobs they were taking. That was seemingly a place that we would never go to anymore, that level of vitriol. We’ve seen it, though, in waves since then: World War II, we had an Asian enemy; Korean War, we had an Asian enemy; Vietnam War, we had an Asian enemy. And then we had Asian enemies that were economic in nature .” ~ Janet Yang ( 2020 ).

In the last week of 2019, the world began to take notice of reports out of Wuhan, China hospitals about an increase in pneumonia cases of unexplained origin (Wang, Horby, Hayden, & Gao, 2020 ). Soon thereafter, scientists found that these illnesses were due to a new type of coronavirus (i.e., severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 [SARS-CoV-2]), which causes a disease referred to as COVID-19 (i.e., 2019 coronavirus disease) (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC], 2020a ). It is believed that the virus spread from animals to humans in Wuhan’s open-air “wet markets” that sell fish and raw meat to consumers (CDC, 2020a ), and by mid-January 2020, began to spread rapidly throughout Asia and globally (Schumaker , 2020 ). By the end of January, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern” (CDC, 2020b ).

As all Americans grew accustomed to a “new normal” secluded lifestyle (e.g., social distancing requirements and stay-at-home orders) and mounting anxieties about the spread of COVID-19, Asian Americans (i.e., people of diverse ethnicities with origins in East Asia and Southeast Asia 1 ) – have been additionally burdened by heightened racial tension and associated racist microaggressions and verbal attacks. Asian Americans have also reported a surge in a second epidemic targeting them specifically – racially motivated hate crimes involving physical violence and harassment – despite the disease impacting people of all races/ethnicities (Chiu, 2020 ). Under the Hate Crime Statistic Act (28 U.S.C. § 534), hate crime is defined as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender and gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.”

Hate crime may be used to “other” minority racial/ethnic groups who are perceived as dangerous (i.e., belief that people of Asian descent are solely responsible for causing and spreading COVID-19) and outside their place of belonging (Grove & Zwi, 2006 ). Othering is embedded in racism (i.e., perceptions of white racial superiority) and xenophobia (i.e., fear of foreigners). Othering involves a process whereby the group at the top of the racial hierarchy (exemplified by whiteness in America) and/or individuals who believe that Asian Americans do not rightly belong in the U.S., seek to maintain the status quo by defining which members of society do and do not fully belong (Perry, 2001 ).

Asian Americans have experienced physical violence/hate crime and harassment (e.g., violent attacks during establishment of Chinatowns in the late 1800s [Chen, 2000 ]), persistent marginalizing stereotyping (e.g., the perpetuation of the “yellow peril” myth at the turn of the 20 th century [Mudambi, 2019 ]), and verbal attacks and microaggressions motivated by individual-level racism and xenophobia from the time they arrived in America in the late 1700s up until the present day (Chen, 2000 ). At the institutional-level, the state (i.e., the federal and state governments) has often implicitly/explicitly reinforced, encouraged, and perpetuated this violence through racist and xenophobic discriminatory rhetoric and exclusionary policies (e.g., Chinese Exclusion Act of 1881 [Yung, Chang, & Lai, 2006 ]).

COVID-19 has enabled the spread of racism and created national insecurity, fear of foreigners, and general xenophobia, which may be associated with the increase in anti-Asian hate crime during the pandemic (Vachuska, 2020 ). Using the lens of othering theory, we examine how these crimes – situated in historically entrenched and intersecting individual-level and institutional-level racism and xenophobia – have operated to other Asian Americans, thus reproducing inequality. A mix of media and empirical sources are used to critically explore this dynamic. This paper positions anti-Asian hate crime during the COVID-19 pandemic historically and in relation to racist and xenophobic othering. We expand scholarship through examining the pandemic-driven hate crime experiences of Asian Americans to more definitively define the concept of othering.

Defining Hate Crime

According to the Department of Justice (DOJ, n.d. ), a hate crime involves a criminal act, including violent crime such as harassment, assault, murder, arson, vandalism, or threats to commit such crimes against a person or his/her property due to their real or perceived race, color, religion, nationality, country of origin, disability, gender or sexual orientation. Conversely, some incidents of bias and hate that occur against marginalized groups meet the legal definition of harassment, but are considered “hate incidents” or acts of prejudice that do not rise to the level of a criminal act (DOJ, n.d. ). These are defined as “acts of prejudice that are not crimes […] and do not involve violence, threats, or property damage” (DOJ, n.d. , n.p.). This paper primarily focuses on anti-Asian hate crimes involving criminal physical violence or harassment; however, we also examine studies and media accounts of anti-Asian “hate incidents” that involve verbal violence or microaggressions and violent crime (i.e., hate incidents and hate crimes were not disaggregated).

Hate crime statutes vary widely across states and jurisdictions and are defined to include varying bias motivations that often carry penalty enhancements (DOJ, n.d. ). Some states require the prosecutor to prove that bias was a “substantial factor” in the perpetrator’s motivation for committing the crime against a person or persons of a protected category if the crime is to be considered a hate crime and receive penalty enhancements under state law (DOJ, n.d. ). Conversely, under federal hate crime laws, bias can be an “incidental factor” in the commission of the crime (DOJ, n.d. ).

Othering Theory

Othering is a concept found in the literature in reference to a dominant group marginalizing a non-dominant group in some way. Originating out of prejudice and fear, the act of othering involves a process that labels those thought to be different from oneself (Weis, 1995 ), wherein the racial group with the most power in American society (e.g., whites) or the group that believes they have “civic belonging” (i.e., believe they intrinsically belong in the U.S.) (Kim & Sundstrom, 2014 ) stigmatize and distance individuals who are racially different (i.e., Asian Americans) (Grove & Zwi, 2006 ; Kim & Sundstrom, 2014 ). Othering also serves to reinforce these dominant groups’ notions of their own “normality,” and position those who are different as deviant through a historical and ongoing process of marginalization, disempowerment, and social exclusion (Grove & Zwi, 2006 ).

Asian Americans and Historical Experiences of Othering

In 2018, the estimated number of Asians in the United States was 22.2 million (U.S. Census Bureau, 2019 ), and they are projected to become the largest immigrant group in the U.S. by 2055 (Horowitz, Brown, & Cox, 2019 ). Among all racial groups in the U.S., Asians are the fastest growing, increasing by 72% between 2000 and 2015 (Lopez, Ruiz, & Patten, 2017 ). Recent studies show that as a bloc, voters from the Asian American community are wielding an influential voice in critical electoral battleground districts, and trends show that they have leaned increasingly Democratic in the past few elections (Zheng , 2019 ). The numbers of Asian American political candidates and elected officials have risen sharply as well (Zheng, 2019 ).

The following description of the early Asian immigrant experience seeks to place the othering of Asian Americans into a historical context, leading up to today’s pandemic-driven experiences ranging from microaggressions and verbal harassment to assault and other violent hate crimes.

Early Asian Immigrant Experience

Established groups with civic belonging in the U.S. have long perceived new waves of immigrants with some degree of resentment (Fussell, 2014 ). Historically, all immigrant groups different from the existing white, English-speaking, Protestant American majority have endured high degrees of suspicion as they fought to gradually establish their place within American culture (Alba & Foner, 2006 ). Unfortunately, in various forms, this nativist attitude (intricately tied to xenophobia) has reflected institutional racism, including restrictive federal immigration policies and legalized racial quotas and exclusions, some of which specifically targeted Asian immigrants (Kil, 2012 ). Additionally, violent racialized attacks on Asian communities by white majority groups throughout American history, especially during the 19 th and 20 th centuries, demonstrate the social entrenchment of this xenophobic mindset in the U.S. over time.

The California Gold Rush of the mid-1800s lured the first large group of Asian immigrants to the continental U.S.: Chinese entrepreneurs seeking to strike gold (Yung et al., 2006 ). Unfortunately, most did not achieve the overblown promises of profit (Yung et al., 2006 ). Unable to return to China and forced to compete for their livelihoods with white “forty-niners” (i.e., white migrants named for the year they began to arrive in California – 1849) from the eastern U.S., these laborers were cast as scapegoats for white migrants' employment frustrations due to their different looks, language, and customs (Yung et al., 2006 ). Forced to work for less than their white counterparts, Asian immigrants labored and lived under harsh conditions, toiling in dangerous mining operations and railroad construction (Yung et al., 2006 ). During this time, Chinese laborers faced institutional racism from the U.S. government in the form of undue tax burdens and legislative barriers to citizenship (Yung et al., 2006 ). Additionally, Chinese immigrants brought opium to the United States when they arrived to participate in the Gold Rush, and eventually established opium dens (i.e., places to buy, sell, and smoke opium) in Chinatowns throughout the West (Ahrens, 2013 ). Many Americans eventually became addicted to the drug, which resulted in a national drug panic (Ahrens, 2013 ). Collectively, these historical events and injustices culminated in the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the first legal decree banning an entire ethnic group from immigration and eligibility for U.S. citizenship (Kil, 2012 ). The Act was primarily fueled by racist and xenophobic fears among white working-class laborers about depressed wages, and fanned by a proliferation of “Chinese invasion” rhetoric in the media. Such language is just one example of the “hordes of immigrant invaders” trope long-used throughout U.S. history to support varying political agendas (Zimmer, 2019 ).

The Chinese American communities of the late 1800s responded to housing segregation policies by forming Chinatowns in major U.S. urban centers where they constructed governing bodies to maintain community order (Chen, 2000 ). Instead of facing severe, racially-motivated maltreatment in mines or factories, many Chinese workers chose self-employment through restaurants, retail establishments, and laundries (Chen, 2000 ). Unfortunately, several of these communities faced a rash of violent, deadly attacks perpetrated by the white majority, sometimes escalating to residents being run out of town with their homes burned to the ground (Chen, 2000 ).

The early 1890s saw a new influx of immigrants from Asian countries, primarily out of Japan, to work in agriculture as well as logging, fishing, mining, and service professions (Aoki, 2010 ). White resentment and calls for Japanese exclusion laws soon followed resulting in “The Gentleman’s Agreement” of 1908 between the U.S. and Japan, whereby Japan agreed to stop further labor immigration to the U.S. (Aoki, 2010 ). However, thousands of wives, parents, and children of current Japanese residents were allowed to immigrate; and in the face of U.S. racial segregation, Japanese families came together to establish enclaves along the West coast (Aoki, 2010 ; Lee, 2002 ). Like the Chinese before them, Japanese and Korean newcomers faced legislative barriers to land ownership, citizenship, and education inspired by racism, which concluded with a 1924 amendment to the Chinese Exclusion Act that denied citizens from any Asian nation to immigrate to the U.S. These anti-Asian laws remained in place until 1943 (Lee, 2002 ).

After Japanese victories in the Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese Wars at the turn of the 20 th century, a new “yellow peril” stereotype arose in the U.S typecasting Asians of all ethnicities, domestic and foreign, as threatening agents bent on world domination (Mudambi, 2019 ). This pernicious stereotype othered Asian Americans as bloodthirsty, sneaky foreigners who were not to be trusted in the same way as Americans of other ancestries. The yellow peril myth perfectly and troublingly set the stage for the next chapter in the American government's discriminatory treatment of Asian communities as the U.S. entered World War II (Lyman, 2000 ).

Japanese Concentration Camps

In what remains one of the most shameful violations of constitutional rights in U.S. history, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order allowing for the forced removal of the entire Japanese population of the U.S. West coast (the majority of whom were American citizens) two months after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December of 1941 (Conrat & Conrat, 1972 ). Allowed only to bring what they could carry, over 120,000 persons of Japanese ancestry were herded into concentration camps surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed military personnel, where they remained through the duration of the war (Howard, 2009 ). Anyone with 1/16 th or more Japanese blood was eligible for removal, perceived as a potential threat (Burton, Farrell, Lord, & Lord, 2011 ).

Ironically, due to xenophobic paranoia and fear of Japanese American sabotage, the U.S. military at Hickham Base in Honolulu, HI had parked their airplanes in a contained area to be more easily guarded, making the planes “sitting-ducks” for air attacks by Japanese bombers (Miller, 1992 ). Despite the wide-ranging feelings of distrust by the larger society towards Asian Americans at that time, tens of thousands of Asian American soldiers of varying ethnicities enlisted and served with valor during the war (Parks, 2004 ).

With the passage of the Immigration Act in 1965 which struck down race as a barrier for immigration, Asian immigrants flowed into the U.S. once again (Yung et al., 2006 ). New waves of East Asian immigrants arrived in the U.S. through the mid to late twentieth century (Chin, 1996 ). As these new groups of Americans integrated into U.S society, a new stereotype proliferated: the myth of the “model minority” (Chou & Feagin, 2015 ). The model minority stereotype promotes the notion that Asian Americans are a monolithic group who have enjoyed great success in American society due to a cultural emphasis on a strong work ethic, natural-born intelligence, and through stressing the importance of education and achievement within their families (Chou & Feagin, 2015 ). Such a seemingly affirmative representation of an entire race masks a negative dynamic of consistently relegating Asian Americans to a permanent foreigner status (i.e., othering) when compared to other Americans (Chou & Feagin, 2015 ). Additionally, this myth works to confirm the belief that America does not have any racial discrimination problems, suggesting that all racial groups operate on an equal playing field with the hardest working groups inevitably rising to the top of their own accord, share equal privilege, and do not experience obstacles brought on by others' racist attitudes and behavior (Chou & Feagin, 2015 ). Finally, in some respects, this myth fosters suspicion and resentment towards Asian communities and immigrants as a whole (McGowan & Lindgren, 2006 ).

Stigmatization and Pandemics

The devastating impact of infectious disease has loomed large throughout human history causing more fatalities than any other medical cause (Pappas, Kiriaze, Giannakis, & Falagas, 2009 ). Unfortunately, eruptions of xenophobia have historically followed close on the heels of pandemics. Especially when viral outbreaks are deadly, fear often drives those at risk to place blame on some “other,” or some group external to their own national, religious, or ethnic identity (Muzzatti, 2005 ). Sickness cultivates fear, which in turn cultivates bias (Muzzatti, 2005 ). Consequently, minority groups have often found themselves erroneously blamed for spreading germs, as insiders perceived them to be “dirty” or “sickly” (Taylor, 2019 ). As a nation built by waves of new immigrants, newcomers to the U.S. have traditionally borne the brunt of corresponding waves of othering in the form of ignorance and blame for a myriad of societal maladies, most notably those concerning infectious disease; a few examples include Irish Catholic immigrants held responsible for “Irish disease” (cholera), Jewish immigrants blamed for “consumption” (tuberculosis), Irish and German newcomers blamed for yellow fever (McKiven, 2007 ), and Italian immigrants blamed for polio (Cohn , 2012 ).

The COVID-19 pandemic is not the first time a public health crisis has resulted in the othering and disparate treatment of Asian Americans. When the bubonic plague began in San Francisco, CA in 1900, public health officials implemented a race-based response by quarantining Chinese residents in Chinatown, the epicenter of the outbreak, while allowing white merchants to leave (Barde, 2004 ). More recently, East Asians across the globe experienced stigmatization during the SARS outbreak of 2002-2004 (Eichelberger, 2007 ).

Despite comprising a tapestry of diverse ethnicities, Asian Americans have been historically viewed as a monolith, othered by the myth of the model minority in times of peace and economic security, while othered as a scapegoat in times of economic adversity, wars, or pandemics.

Anti-Asian Hate Crime during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Prior sections have explored how anti-Asian racism and xenophobia in the U.S. have been reproduced and historically entrenched at the individual- and institutional-levels during times of crisis and significant change so as to other Asian Americans and reinforce their inequality. The sections below examine how hate crime exacted in response to the COVID-19 pandemic is an extreme and exacerbated replication of this othering process; and how institutional-level racist and xenophobic rhetoric targeting Asian Americans has established the structure through which individual-level hate crimes occur.

What’s in a Name?

The WHO ( 2015 ) followed their “Best Practices for the Naming of New Human Diseases” in selecting “COVID-19” as the name for the disease caused by SARS-CoV-2. These best practices endeavor to avoid offending any cultural, social, national, regional, professional, and/or ethnic groups (WHO, 2015 ). According to Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO Assistant Director-General for Health Security, disease names can create significant consequences in terms of backlash against affected religious or ethnic groups (WHO, 2015 ). WHO ( 2015 ) best practices also advocate the avoidance of geographic locations or references to culture, population, or language that incites fear.

Disregarding the WHO’s ( 2015 ) official nomenclature, President Donald Trump publicly used the terms “Chinese virus” or “China virus” for COVID-19 in various tweets between March 16–18, 2020 (Fallows , 2020 ), as well as in a White House press conference on March 19 th , and then repetitively defended his use of the terms throughout March and early April (Chiu, 2020 ). A widely circulated image captured at the March 19 th press conference shows the president’s notes with the “corona” in “coronavirus” crossed out and replaced with “Chinese” (Smith , 2020 ). When confronted about his use of the “Chinese” descriptive rather than the WHO-official “COVID-19” term, the president responded, “It’s from China. That’s why. It comes from China. I want to be accurate ” (Fallows , 2020 ). While President Trump repeatedly referred to COVID-19 as the “Chinese virus” or “China virus,” Secretary of State Mike Pompeo preferred the term “Wuhan virus” (Rogers, 2020 ). Additionally, an unnamed White House staffer allegedly used the term “kung flu” (Boyer, 2020 ).

Some argue that such terminology is both racist and xenophobic (Chiu, 2020 ) as it promotes anti-Asian bias and exclusion (Little, 2020 ), which may increase the risk of hate crime (Cabanatuan , 2020 ). The president’s early rhetoric undoubtedly did not serve to protect the Asian community. Before Trump made these remarks in mid-March, racist acts and harassment targeting Asian Americans had already surged; they continued to increase through March and April following his statements (Haynes, 2020 ). On the coattails of President Trump’s remarks, other political officials have also used derogatory language to blame the Chinese for causing COVID-19. For example, Senator John Cornyn (R-TX) said in a press conference on March 18 th that China was to “blame” for the spread of COVID-19 because they are a “ culture where people eat bats and snakes and dogs and things like that ” (Wu, 2020 ). On March 23 rd , the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) issued a warning that white supremacists may use the crisis to justify harm or violence against Asian Americans (Mallin & Margolin, 220). Also in late March, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) anticipated that there would be a surge in anti-Asian hate crime during the pandemic and therefore alerted law enforcement agencies to be on heightened alert for bias-motivated incidents (Mallin & Margolin, 2020 ).

According to a recent not yet published news content analysis (detailed in the San Francisco Chronicle ) conducted by Professor Russell Jeung of the Asian American Studies department at San Francisco State University, the number of “hate incidents” reported in the media increased in response to the xenophobic language used by public officials (Cabanatuan, 2020 ; Jeung, 2020 ). Moreover, Dr. Jeung remarked that the timing in the sharp rise in hate incidents specifically coincided with the president’s use of the term, “Chinese virus” (Jeung, 2020 ; Kang, 2020 ). He argued that his findings demonstrate that political language can provoke racial hatred and associated violence (Sheyner, 2020 ). At the same time, it appears that the study defines “hate incidents” as involving aggregated hate crimes and hate incidents, making it difficult to distinguish between the two.

Similarly, in the week following the president’s March 19 th press conference, the “Stop AAPI Hate” (AAPI refers to Asian American and Pacific Islander) website that includes an anti-AAPI harassment, discrimination, and violent attacks self-reporting tool, recorded 673 “racist incidents” (Cabanatuan, 2020 ); however, it is not known how many of these incidents apply directly to the Asian community. Similar to Dr. Jeung’s ( 2020 ) study, “racist incidents” likely involve the aggregate of hate crimes and hate incidents.

Additionally, in a pre-print manuscript, Vachuska ( 2020 ) analyzed Google Trends data and found that attitudes toward minority racial groups have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, to measure anti-Chinese sentiment, the author examined the proportion of and relationships among searches for a specific racial epithet used to describe a person of Chinese descent, coronavirus searches, Chinese restaurants, etc. (Vachuska, 2020 ). The author reported strong evidence of a relationship between COVID-19 and an increase in anti-Chinese sentiment, including discriminatory treatment towards the Asian community and Chinese restaurants (Vachuska, 2020 ). More research is needed to clarify anti-Asian hate crime trends during and following the COVID-19 pandemic.

As awareness grew about the growing number of hate incidents and hate crimes against Asian Americans, accusations of racism and xenophobia around the president’s insistence on using the term, “Chinese virus,” exploded in the media. The White House responded to the uproar by accusing the media of manufacturing “fake outrage” over nothing, citing previous epidemics named after geographic locations: Spanish flu, West Nile, zika virus, and ebola (Mangan , 2020 ). However, the WHO ( 2015 ) appropriately named the novel coronavirus “COVID-19” to avoid a connection with a geographic area and therefore circumvent the stigmatization of people living in that area or of similar ancestry worldwide. The correlating increase in hate crimes against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic (Jeung, 2020 ; Vachuska, 2020 ) underlines the importance of avoiding geography in the naming of communicable diseases (Little, 2020 ). 2

On March 23, 2020, President Trump walked back his use of the term “Chinese virus,” noting in a network news interview that the American people were already well aware of the virus’ true origins; however, he declined to apologize for using the geographic descriptor (Leigh , 2020 ). Additionally, the president declared that Asian Americans should not be blamed “ in any way, shape, or form ” for COVID-19 (Samuels, 2020 ). He also denounced the recent spate of pandemic-related racial attacks on Asian Americans (Samuels , 2020 ). Unfortunately, for many hate crime victim advocates and Asian Americans, this change of heart came too late; too much damage had already occurred (Shyong , 2020 ). One could argue that in the critical early days when the language coming from America’s leadership set the tone, concerns about its effects on Asian Americans had been negligent at best, and destructive at worst.

Hate Crime Data

The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 requires the federal government to collect data about crimes motivated by race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity (FBI, n.d. ). The nation’s largest sources of crime data, the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report (UCR) and the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), provide national estimates of hate crime (Masucci & Langton, 2017 ). Both sources define hate crime according to the federal definition noted in the Introduction. Hate crime data are also collected by advocacy organizations that provide assistance to marginalized communities (e.g., Southern Policy Law Center, Asian Pacific Policy Planning Council, Anti-Defamation League) (Gladfelter, Lantz, & Ruback, 2017 ; Jenness & Grattet, 2001 ). Each of these data sources have significant limitations (Gladfelter et al., 2017 ).

UCR and NCVS data have been utilized in the present study because they are the largest and most representative of the population. We examined hate crime data from the two collections for the 16-year period from 2003 to 2018, the years of data available for both sources. 3 Both collections provide data on annual counts of racially-motivated hate crime. The UCR enables these counts to be disaggregated by the specific type of racial bias motivating the offense (e.g., anti-Asian bias; anti-African American bias; anti-Hispanic violence, etc.), while the NCVS statistics can be disaggregated by the race of the victim. The sections below describe the two collections and what they tell us about anti-Asian hate crime prior to COVID-19. Throughout these data sections, we refer to anti-Asian hate crime; however, both the UCR and NCVS numbers include hate crimes against Pacific Islanders and Native Hawaiians as well.

Because the NCVS is based on a sample, it is necessary to aggregate several years of data to have sufficient sample sizes for reliable estimates of anti-Asian hate crime. UCR hate crime counts were calculated from Hate Crime Statistics Program data available on the FBI (2003–2007, 2014-2018 ) website, and NCVS estimates were generated from the public-use data files available through the National Archive of Criminal Justice Data ( n.d. ) (BJS, 1992 –2018).

The FBI annually collects summary crime data from thousands of city, county, college and university, state, tribal, and federal law enforcement agencies nationwide through the UCR Program. Through a supplementary collection to the UCR, the Hate Crime Statistics Program, the FBI additionally collects data on hate crime incidents, offenses, and victims, including details about the offender’s bias motivation and whether he or she was motivated by anti-Asian bias. Although the UCR hate crime statistics can be used to identify victims of anti-Asian bias, it should be noted that the bias motivation is based on the offender’s perceptions of the victim. In other words, the victim may not necessarily be of Asian descent, but if the offender believed they were and targeted them for that reason, the incident would be counted as an anti-Asian hate crime. The FBI data also distinguish between single-bias hate crime incidents, and multiple-bias incidents in which the offender(s) was motivated by two or more biases. The discussion below examines single-bias hate crimes, which account for the majority of UCR hate crimes (about 98% in 2018), as we are interested in hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian bias alone. It is also important to note that both the UCR and NCVS include hate crime data involving Asian Americans and documented and undocumented Asian immigrants (Addington, 2008 ).

UCR data reveal that during the 5-year period from 2003 to 2007, there was an average of 9314 victims of single-bias hate crimes. Of those victims, 67.0%, ( n = 6241) were motivated by racial/ethnic/ancestral bias. Among these 6241 racially motivated hate crimes, 4.1% ( n = 254) were motivated by anti-Asian bias. In comparison, during the most recent 5-year period from 2014 to 2018, there was an average of 7690 single-bias hate crime victims, of which 59.6% ( n = 4581) were targeted due to racial/ethnic/ancestral bias, and anti-Asian bias accounted for 3.8% ( n = 176) of these crimes. Across these two 5-year periods, there was a 26.6% decrease in single-bias racially motivated hate crimes, and a 30.8% decrease in anti-Asian motivated hate crime.

When interpreting UCR hate crime statistics it is important to take into account the underreporting problems associated with these data. In 2018, for example, at least 80 cities in the U.S. with populations over 100,000 people reported zero hate crimes for the year. Underreporting may occur at the agency-level because reporting to the FBI is voluntary. Within agencies, underreporting may occur due to the difficulty law enforcement officers have identifying objective evidence of the bias motivation to determine whether or not the incident is a hate crime (Gladfelter et al., 2017 ). A victim must identify the crime as motivated by prejudice in order for law enforcement to classify it as a hate crime; and when detectives investigate, they must collect evidence to prove that the incident was motivated by bias, which is often challenging and unclear (Gladfelter et al., 2017 ). In regard to the latter however, the determination, about whether to charge the offense as a hate crime often falls on the prosecutor, not the police. In addition, UCR data may undercount hate crime if victims do not report to police because they do not believe the racially motivated violence was a crime, have language and cultural barriers, lack trust in the government and police, have a fear of retaliatory violence, and/or believe that they will not be taken seriously by criminal justice system actors (Davis & O’Neill, n.d. ).

The NCVS has been used to collect hate crime data since 2003 (Masucci & Langton, 2017 ). Unlike the UCR that includes offenses known to and reported by police departments, the NCVS collects information from a nationally representative sample of households about experiences with crime both reported and not reported to police (i.e., the “dark figure of crime”). Upon identifying that a respondent has experienced crime, the NCVS asks victims if they have any reason to believe that the victimization was a “hate crime or crime of prejudice or bigotry” (NCVS, 2016 [question 161]). Victimizations are only categorized hate crimes if the victim can provide certain types of evidence to support an affirmative response (Addington, 2008 ). Additionally, the NCVS asks hate crime victims about the types of bias they suspected motivated the crime (Masucci & Langton 2017 ).

NCVS data reveal that from 2003 to 2007, there was an average of 265,062 annual hate crime victimizations, of which 67.1% ( n = 177,946) were motivated by racial/ethnic bias. About 2.5% of hate crime victimizations were against persons identifying as Asian, Pacific Islander or Native Hawaiian ( n = 6625), and the vast majority (>99%) 4 were motivated by anti-racial/ethnic bias. During the more recent 2014–2018 period, there was an average of 224,435 total hate crimes with 57.7% ( n = 128,474) motivated by racial/ethnic bias. About 2.7% of the hate crime victimizations were against Asians, Pacific Islanders, or Native Hawaiians ( n = 6158), again with the vast majority (94%) motivated by the offender’s racial or ethnic bias. Across the two periods, it appears that hate crime overall declined by 15.3%, and hate crimes against people of Asian descent declined by 7.0%; however, the differences between the estimates are not statistically significant when the confidence intervals are taken into account. Importantly, the NCVS data also reveal that less than half of hate crime victimizations overall (43.2%) are reported to police, and this is true among Asian victims as well (47.6%).

Reconciling Variations in Estimates

The UCR reported a large percentage decrease (30.8%) in anti-Asian motivated hate crime while the NCVS indicated a small percentage decrease (7.0%) across the two 5-year time periods. Discrepancies in percentages suggest vast underreporting of hate crime to police and magnify the hidden nature of hate crime against Asian Americans in the U.S. today. Indeed, NCVS hate crime data reveal that 47.6% of Asian victims do not report to the police. While both results reflect a decrease in hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian bias across time, the large differences between the two statistics make it unclear how extensive the decrease is. After the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, scholars should compare old and new UCR and NCVS hate crime data to determine whether the prevalence of anti-Asian hate crime has markedly increased/changed. 5 Inconsistencies in both sources’ anti-Asian hate crime data collectively show the limitations of using official data to accurately estimate the prevalence of hate crime.

Additionally, the vast difference between the UCR’s and NCVS’s reported numbers of racially motivated hate crimes is striking and problematic. For example, from 2003 to 2007, UCR data indicate that there were 6241 hate crimes motivated by racial/ethnic prejudice, while NCVS data demonstrate that 177,946 hate crimes involved racial/ethnic bias motivation, which is an approximate 186% difference between the two. Discrepancies between the two data collections make it difficult to determine the actual pervasiveness of racially motivated hate crime in the U.S. across time. NCVS data is arguably more reliable than UCR data because it includes both reported and unreported hate crimes. With this in mind, NCVS data suggest that anti-Asian hate crime has remained an alarming problem across time, while UCR data imply the opposite (or a less alarming persistent trend).

Assessing 2020 Hate Crime Data

Data from the 2020 NCVS and UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program are expected to be released in late 2021. At that point, researchers will be able to assess both the extent to which law enforcement data show a spike in anti-Asian hate crimes known to police and whether there were changes in the numbers of Asian victims of hate crimes reported or not reported to police. Although the two data sources may not be consistent in terms of the magnitude of any spike, together they should provide empirical evidence about whether the qualitative, anecdotal suggestions of a pandemic-related increase in anti-Asian hate crimes was true nationwide. Together the two sources will show whether there were overall increases in the number of hate crimes against Asian Americans and whether the victims were comfortable seeking help from the police.

Personal Experiences of Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Social media has played a significant role in publicizing racialized attacks against Asian Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Tweets have exposed instances of anti-Asian hate crime involving physical violence and harassment, mainly after bystander videos were posted and picked up by the broader media. Twitter hashtags such as #WashTheHate and #HateIsAVirus trended on social media platforms as users responded to the incidents they viewed on their screens (Elder, 2020 ). For example, New York City police urged the victim of a COVID-19 hate crime to come forward and make a report after a video surfaced on February 5 th of a man physically and verbally assaulting her while she was wearing a facemask in a Chinatown subway station, calling her a “ diseased (expletive) ” (Sosa & Brown, 2020 ).

In another incident on March 10 th , a Korean American woman in midtown Manhattan was grabbed by the hair, shoved, and punched in the face by an assailant (Miles, 2020 ). The perpetrator yelled at the victim, “ You’ve got coronavirus, you Asian (expletive) ” and “ Where’s your (expletive) mask? ” (Miles, 2020 ). The victim suffered a dislocated jaw (Miles, 2020 ).

One of the most horrific examples of COVID-19-related hate crimes occurred on March 14 th at a Sam’s Club in Midland, TX, when a perpetrator attacked a family from Myanmar, stabbing three victims including a 2-year-old girl and a 6-year-old boy (Aziz, 2020 ). The assailant told police he feared the victims were Chinese and infecting others with the coronavirus (Aziz, 2020 ). Another extreme example occurred on April 5 th , when an Asian American woman in Brooklyn was doused with acid by a man who snuck up behind her as she was taking her trash outside her front door, causing second degree burns to her body, face, and hands (Moore & Cassady, 2020 ).

In late March, a 26-year-old Asian American man in a Brooklyn subway explained how a man spat in his face, and when he asked the man why he did so, the perpetrator yelled at him, “ You (expletive) Chinese spreading the coronavirus! ” (Moore & Bensimon, 2020 ) The perpetrator then unzipped his jacket and pointed to a weapon saying, “ You wanna do this? ” (Moore & Bensimon, 2020 ).

Psychological Effects of Hate Crimes

Many scientific studies have established a correlation between racialized victimization and poor mental health outcomes (e.g., Gee, Spencer, Chen, Yip, & Takeuchi, 2007 ). Since the emergence of COVID-19, there has been a 22% total increase in people accessing the Mental Health America anxiety screening tool; among users, the increase in Asian American respondents has been 39% (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020 ). Research also suggests that hate crime victims experience more severe consequences compared to victims of non-hate crimes (Mellgren, Andersson, & Ivert, 2017 ). Specifically, McDevitt, Balboni, Garcia, and Gu ( 2001 ) reported that bias crimes impact victims differently than non-bias crimes in that victims of bias crimes are more fearful and experience intrusive thoughts following their victimization.

Institutional-Level Response

Federal response.

In the last week of March 2020, Congresswoman Grace Menge (D-NY) introduced a resolution calling for all public officials to condemn anti-Asian discrimination (Jeung, Kulkarni, & Choi, 2020 ). Additionally, the resolution called for federal law enforcement agencies to address pandemic-related hate crimes through data collection, documentation, and investigation (Jeung et al., 2020 ). Finally, Menge called for states to set up multi-agency task forces to address COVID-19-related racial bias concerning safe retail access, fair employment, and quality mental health services in educational settings for Asian American students and others affected by the pandemic (Jeung et al., 2020 ).

While many in the Asian community appreciated Trump’s March 23 rd reversal regarding his use of the term “Chinese virus” and the positive comments he made about Asian Americans, advocates continue to await a meaningful response from the federal government, such as the creation of a DOJ Task Force to address hate crimes against the Asian community (Warner, 2020 ). As Matt Nguyen-Ngo, Civil Rights Fellow at the nonprofit OCA-Asian Pacific American Advocates expressed, “ Trump did say Asian Americans are not to blame, but he hasn’t done anything beyond that […] It’s been a very lackluster response” (Chapman, 2020 ; Kang, 2020 ). At a March 26 th White House press briefing on the pandemic, when asked what he is doing to stop anti-Asian hate crimes in the country, Trump replied, “ I don’t know ” (Chapman, 2020 ).

In addition to the lack of response from the Oval Office, neither the DOJ nor the CDC have done much to respond to the pandemic. In the past, the CDC has responded quickly to prevent racialized violence, as it did during the 2003 SARS outbreak (far less prevalent or deadly than COVID-19), and the DOJ acted quickly after the 2001 terror attacks (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020 ). Lamenting the lack of action, a group of 12 U.S. senators penned a letter to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights requesting official guidance on federal response: “ There has not been a concerted effort from federal agencies to prevent and address anti-Asian sentiment related to the COVID-19 pandemic ” (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020 ). In response, Assistant Attorney General, Eric Dreiband stated that hate crimes would be prosecuted to the full extent of the law (Campbell & Ellerbeck, 2020 ).

State Response

On February 13, 2020, in response to the recent uptick in verbal attacks and other racial incidents targeting Asian Americans in Los Angeles, CA, county officials held a news conference denouncing racist incidents against the Asian community related to fears around COVID-19 (Capatides, 2020 ). Officials urged the public not to buy into stereotypes and misinformation about Asians, specifically citing two separate bullying incidents in public schools that resulted in the hospitalization of school-aged victims (City News Service, 2020 ). In a more concrete response to the increase in harassment and physical assault directed at Asian Americans due to COVID-19, New York’s Attorney General, Letitia James established a state hotline for reporting hate incidents and hate crimes (New York Attorney General, 2020 ).

Discussion/Conclusion: Anti-Asian Hate Crime and the Reproduction of Inequality

Despite a long history in North America and increasing numbers and political influence today, Asian American communities have continued to experience a recurring dynamic of othering. Racism and xenophobia woven into the social fabric may generate harmful individual-level attitudes and actions against Asian Americans that other and exclude them from national belonging. Racially dominant and/or well-established groups in America that hold social power have historically resented the arrival and presence of less well-established and influential groups such as Asian Americans, perceiving them as “foreigners” outside of their “proper” place of belonging and a threat to notions of community and sovereignty (Grove & Zwi, 2006 ; Kim & Sundstrom, 2014 ). Such nativist and xenophobic resentments intricately overlap with racism, wherein those in power fear and resist those who look different, speak dissimilar languages, and have unique cultural practices in comparison. As a result, the othering of Asian Americans has been historically repetitive in the form of bigoted exclusionary practices and violence, thus serving to entrench their foreigner and marginalized status and maintain the racial and nationalist hierarchy.

One could argue that the social and institutional entrenchment of racism and xenophobia has resulted in the repetitive re-emergence of anti-Asian stereotypes across time. For example, the prevalent discrimination and bigotry wrought by the yellow peril and the model minority myths further marked and established Asian Americans as inherently different from the majority population (McGowan & Lindgren, 2006 ). Additionally, institutionalized processes and government policies (elevated tax burdens, education and housing segregation, land ownership restrictions, and barriers to Asian immigration and citizenship [Zimmer, 2019 ]), further sustained the othering of Asian Americans.

This othering process is amplified and replicated during pandemics when widespread fear of catching disease engenders prejudice against groups that are different from the majority population, positioning them as effective scapegoats (Muzzatti, 2005 ; Taylor, 2019 ). Ostracizing Asian Americans in this way metaphorically builds a wall between those socially perceived as most important (i.e., whites) and those perceived as less important (i.e., Asian Americans), creating a boundary where “never the two shall meet.” This othering dynamic has reemerged during the COVID-19 pandemic, as illustrated by President Trump’s and other political officials’ use of racially derogatory language (Fallows , 2020 ; Rogers , 2020 ; Wu , 2020 ).

As cognitive linguists Lakoff and Johnson ( 2003 ) have long established, metaphors are ubiquitous in forming our world view. The adjective “Chinese” in “Chinese virus” is particularly problematic as it associates the infection with an ethnicity. Connecting group identities with explicitly medical language serves to categorize those group identities as other. Historically, this connection has influenced anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy in the United States. The WHO’s ( 2015 ) best-practices in naming infectious diseases exemplifies the importance of severing this connection in order to avoid stigma against geographic locations and ethnic groups.

Though most public officials eventually reversed course in their “China virus” rhetoric, regardless of whether this reversal was motivated by a sudden altruistic understanding or by political calculation, the damage had already been done. At any rate, any commitment to avoiding the public othering of Asian Americans was short-lived. As late as April 17, 2020, President Trump put out a tweet criticizing House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for making a February trip to San Francisco’s Chinatown in support of Asian American owned businesses, after declaring in another tweet that he had already “ closed the BORDER TO CHINA ” (capitalized letters used by the president) (Behrmann , 2020 ). This seeming failure to distinguish between the residents of San Francisco’s Chinatown and foreign nationals from the nation of China reinforces the idea of their enduring foreignness. Additionally, through the late spring of 2020, political focus increasingly turned to placing blame for the COVID-19 pandemic on the nation of China; a by-product of this focus is increased suspicion and fear in the American consciousness towards Asian Americans, creating the perfect climate to cultivate further hate crime (Jeung et al., 2020 ).

One could argue that the historical perpetuation of this othering process, embedded in fear of perceived outsiders and racial hatred, has allowed for more extreme, violent, and devastating violence and state abuse, such as the Japanese Concentration Camps following the Pearl Harbor attacks (Conrat & Conrat, 1972 ), and the seeming influx of hate crime we see today with the COVID-19 pandemic. Hate crimes during the COVID-19 pandemic are an extreme manifestation of othering illustrating the replicative and cumulative effects of the historical embeddedness of racism and xenophobia. That is, perpetrators exact violence to dehumanize and ostracize Asian Americans, stigmatizing and “marking” them as deviant to destroy their sense of belonging (Kim & Sundstrom , 2014 ), encourage and perpetuate ongoing exclusion, sustain feelings of superiority, and restore feelings of normalcy and comfort. It is likely that this rash of COVID-19 related hate crimes and incidents will have enduring deleterious psychological, emotional, and physical effects on Asian American victims and Asian communities, exacerbated by decades of generational trauma (Comas-Díaz, 2016 ). Arguably equally as devastating is the damage to society of normalizing the othering of any minority group based on race, ethnicity, religion, national origin, disability, gender identity, and/or sexual orientation. Although immigration status was not specifically explored in this paper, it is important to note that Asian immigrants without citizenship status may experience exacerbated devastating health effects of COVID-19 hate crime as they have reduced access to resources that may help to address that harm due to fears of deportation upon reporting (Dorn et al., 2011 ).

COVID-19 is a public health matter, not a racial one (Jeung et al., 2020 ). Not only is it critical to stop the spread of COVID-19, but also the racial hatred it has produced (Jeung et al., 2020 ). It is also essential that we take the lessons learned from racialized fear derived from historical events and apply that knowledge to feelings of fear and anxiety during the pandemic (Jeung et al., 2020 ). Unfortunately, the pandemic-related stigmatization of Asian Americans and Asians across the globe may continue long after the cessation of COVID-19. Americans must confront incidents of discrimination head-on: in schools, workplaces, businesses, and public spaces, in addition to demanding a robust response from law enforcement and the federal and state governments when hate crimes occur (Jeung et al., 2020 ).

In summary, across time, socially entrenched racism and xenophobia toward Asian Americans have repetitively recurred through individual-level prejudiced attitudes and actions. Moreover, these attitudes and actions have been reinforced by institutional-level support during times of crisis or great change, including the coronavirus pandemic. As a result, racial/ethnic inequality has been reproduced through the establishment of an “ us. vs. them ” modus operandi that relegates Asian Americans to the bottom of the social hierarchy, wrongly and maliciously marking them unworthy of the same rights and treatment as those at the top. Such othering has led to a climate in which Asian Americans are more vulnerable to racialized forms of aggression, including hate crimes.

Biographies

Angela r. gover.

, Ph.D., has been a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice at the University of Colorado School of Public Affairs since 2006. Dr. Gover received her Ph.D. in Criminology and Criminal Justice from the University of Maryland. Dr. Gover’s published work appears in over 100 journal articles and edited volumes (i.e., book chapters) such as Child Abuse & Neglect, Violence and Victims, Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Journal of Child Sexual Abuse , and Violence Against Women . Dr. Gover remains active in her profession by serving on editorial boards for several journals in her field. Her current research focuses on the criminal justice system’s response to intimate partner violence, specifically, domestic violence offender treatment, personal protection orders, and law enforcement officer attitudes towards domestic violence.

Shannon B. Harper

, Ph.D., is an Assistant Professor of criminal justice in the Sociology Department and U.S. Latino/a Studies Program at Iowa State University. Dr. Harper’s research explores the relationship between intimate partner violence and intimate partner homicide (IPH) and the gendered contexts through which both occur. She examines the neighborhood social and structural factors that influence IPH, as well as how the criminal justice system and community resources operate to address it and the abuse that precipitates it. Dr. Harper’s work also investigates how race/ethnicity, class, and gender intersect to shape marginalized survivors’ interpersonal victimization experiences, specifically Latina and African American women. Her published works can be found in multiple peer-reviewed journals and edited volumes.

, Ph.D., is a Senior Research Criminologist at RTI International. Her research focuses on victimization, victim services, sexual violence, hate crime, financial fraud and white-collar crime, police-community relations, and survey methodology. Prior to joining RTI in 2018, Dr. Langton served as Victimization Unit Chief for the Bureau of Justice Statistics where she directed numerous large-scale national projects, including the National Crime Victimization Survey.

People with origins in East Asia (Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Okinawan, Taiwanese, Tibetan) and Southeast Asia (Bruneian, Burmese, Cambodian, Filipino, Hmong, Indonesian, Laotian, Malaysian, Mien, Papua New Guinean, Singaporean, Timorese, Thai, Vietnamese).

Additionally, it is important to note that hate crimes against Asian Americans may have increased following national awareness of COVID-19 regardless of the president’s problematic rhetoric.

The NCVS hate crime data are available in public-use files beginning in 2003. For both collections, the most recent year of data available is 2018. Both data collections operate on a calendar year (January–December). Once the collections close on December 31st, the BJS and FBI spend several months cleaning and processing the annual files and typically release the data several months later in the summer or fall. In other words, 2019 data are expected to be released in the late summer or early fall of 2020.

NCVS data suggest that all hate crime victimizations against Asians were motivated by racial or ethnic bias; however, the data are based on a sample so this is not a true 100%.

It is important to note that when thinking about comparing any kind of percent declines, the FBI treats their numbers as a complete enumeration, when in reality, there is agency- and item-level missingness among the data. The FBI does not produce standard errors so it is difficult to determine whether an apparent change in a number is actually within the margin of error.

Publisher’s Note

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Contributor Information

Angela R. Gover, Email: [email protected]

Shannon B. Harper, Email: [email protected]

Lynn Langton, Email: [email protected].

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PDF Research report 102: Causes and motivations of hate crime
Some differences in the nature and dynamics of hate crime can be observed across the protected strands. Research suggests that both anti-Lesbian, Gay or Bisexual (LGB) and transphobic hate crime can involve a greater propensity towards physical violence. Disability hate crime evidence shows high levels of sexual violence and property offences.
Using Research to Improve Hate Crime Reporting and Identification
International Association of Chiefs of Police, Responding to Hate Crimes: A Police Officer's Guide to Investigation and Prevention (Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Administration, 1999). The five NIJ-supported hate crime study reports covered in this article are: Carlos A. Cuevas, et al., Understanding and Measuring Bias Victimization Against Latinos, October ...
Addressing Hate Crime in the 21st Century: Trends, Threats, and
Hate crimes, often referred to as bias-motivated crimes, have garnered greater public attention and concern as political rhetoric in the United States and internationally has promoted the exclusion of people based on their group identity. This review examines what we know about the trends in hate crime behavior and the legal responses to this problem across four main domains.
Hidden Hate, Hidden Violence: Dismantling Myths and Identifying Fresh
Applying the Hate Crime Concept to the Indian Context" Mohsin and Chakraborti propose a creative translation of the Westernized hate crime concept to the Indian context. By adopting a transnational approach, the authors support this translation, but do so with a level of caution and reflection that takes into account the complexities of ...
Hate/bias crime against racial/ethnic minorities in the United States
Hate crimes against ethnic/racial minorities have been a social issue for a while, but the recent COVID-19 pandemic outbreak that started in 2019 in Wuhan, China increased scholarly attention on hate crimes against Asians, in particular (see Kim et al., 2023). Thus, we aimed to overview the current patterns and status of hate/bias crime ...
The Historical Facts about Hate Crime in America The Social Worker's
The Journal of Hate Studies is an annual peer-reviewed publication of the Gonzaga University Institute for Hate Studies. The Journal of Hate Studies is an international scholarly journal promoting the sharing of interdisciplinary ideas and research relating to the study of what hate is, where it comes from, and how to combat it. It presents cutting-edge essays, theory, and research that deepen ...
Constructing Hate Crimes: Does Respondent's Racial/Ethnic Identity
Additionally, the perception of racial/ethnic hate crimes is primarily driven by the Majority-Minority pattern, regardless of the group membership. This study calls for further efforts not only in researching the role of race/ethnicity in relation to racial/ethnic hate crime recognition but also in advancing the practice of hate crime ...
PDF Exploring Alternative Approaches to Hate Crimes
compiling hate crime statistics and investigating violations of federal hate crime statutes, defines hate crime as a "criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity."5 crimes.
PDF The Conundrums of Hate Crime Prevention
to hate crimes grew more complicated amid calls to defund the police and new attention to systemic racism in the criminal legal system. While some in targeted communities called for more policing and greater enforcement of hate crime laws, others sought alternative solutions that relied less on law enforcement and imprisonment to improve safety.
Anti-Asian Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the
The discussion below examines single-bias hate crimes, which account for the majority of UCR hate crimes (about 98% in 2018), as we are interested in hate crimes motivated by anti-Asian bias alone. It is also important to note that both the UCR and NCVS include hate crime data involving Asian Americans and documented and undocumented Asian ...

Using Research to Improve Hate Crime Reporting and Identification

Hate Crime Reporting Deficit Driven by Fear, Lack of Knowledge

Three Conditions for a Hate Crime to Enter National Statistics

Dealing With Divergent Hate Crime Definitions

Understanding Victim Reluctance to Report Hate Crimes

Multiple Sources of Initial Hate Crime Reporting to Law Enforcement

Recognizing Hate Crime Incidents

Mixed-Motive Hate Offenses: Choosing Victims for Their Vulnerability

Varying Hate-Based Forms of Messaging – How to Identify a Crime as Hate-Motivated

Characteristics of Primary Suspects in Hate Crime Investigations

Varying Traits of Those Who Commit Hate Crimes

Agency Reporting of Zero Hate Crimes

Implications and Recommendations: How Research Can Enhance Hate Crime Reporting, Investigations

Sidebar: Hate Crimes: A Distinct Crime Category

Sidebar: Hate Crime vs. Bias Victimization

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Hidden Hate, Hidden Violence: Dismantling Myths and Identifying Fresh Challenges for Research and Policy

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Journal of Hate Studies

The Historical Facts about Hate Crime in America The Social Worker’s Role in Victim Recovery and Community Restoration

Introduction

Social Factors that Define a Hate Crime

History of Hate Crime in America and its Legislative Outcomes

The Impact of Hate Crime on the Victim and Society

Restorative Justice and Hate Crime – What Social Work Professionals Need to Know

Using the Restorative Justice Model to Provide Social Services to Hate Crime Survivors

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Competing Interests

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Anti-Asian Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Exploring the Reproduction of Inequality

Introduction

Defining Hate Crime

Othering Theory

Asian Americans and Historical Experiences of Othering

Early Asian Immigrant Experience

Japanese Concentration Camps

Stigmatization and Pandemics

Anti-Asian Hate Crime during the COVID-19 Pandemic

What’s in a Name?

Hate Crime Data

Reconciling Variations in Estimates

Assessing 2020 Hate Crime Data

Personal Experiences of Hate Crime During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Psychological Effects of Hate Crimes

Institutional-Level Response

State Response

Discussion/Conclusion: Anti-Asian Hate Crime and the Reproduction of Inequality

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Shannon B. Harper

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