A hate crime is committed when the motivation for committing the crime is based on bias against people or groups with specific characteristics that are defined by the law. This includes crime committed based on the victim’s perceived or actual race, color, religion, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, or disability. Hate crimes affect families, communities, and at times, the entire nation. It is estimated that an average of 250,000 hate crimes are committed in the United States each year. The majority of these are not reported to law enforcement. Reporting hate crimes allows communities and law enforcement to fully understand the scope of the problem in a community and put resources toward preventing and addressing attacks based on bias and hate (U.S. Department of Justice).

Considerations for Equitable Approaches: Over the past 10 years, the largest proportion of reported hate crimes have been committed based on race/ethnicity/ancestry, followed by religion and sexual orientation. Hate crimes committed based on anti-Black or African American bias are the largest category of all bias motivation categories. Of religion-related incidents, anti-Jewish incidents make up the largest bias category (U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation). In addition to actions by law enforcement, communities can work to address hate crimes by creating community policing models, developing law enforcement-community partnerships, assessing the problem utilizing the SARA (scanning, analyzing, responding, assessing) model, and creating community-wide public awareness campaigns (U.S. Department of Justice).