Hate Crime Reporting: Understanding Police Officer Perceptions, Departmental Protocol, and the Role of the Victim is There Such a Thing as a “Love” Crime?

• Author: Jack McDevitt,Jennifer M. Balboni
• DOI: 10.3818/JRP.3.1.2001.1
• Published date: 01 June 2001
• Date: 01 June 2001
• Subject Matter: Article

Hate Crime Reporting • 1

*Hate Crime Reporting: Understanding

Police Officer Perceptions, Departmental

Protocol, and the Role of the Victim

Is There Such a Thing As a “Love” Crime?

Jennifer M. Balboni

Jack McDevitt

Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research

Northeastern University

*Abstract

Due to sporadic and often perfunctory compliance with the Hate Crime Statistics Act

of 1990, official data on hate crime currently tell us little about the prevalence of hate

crime nationally. Reasons for this include lack of departmental infrastructure to support

accurate reporting, lack of training, officer disincentives to accurately report, and,

perhaps most importantly, hesitation on the part of victims to involve law enforcement

in these matters. Using a survey of law enforcement officers from a stratified national

sample, as well as interviews with advocacy and human rights professionals, this

article will discuss all of these factors and their impact on hate crime reporting.

Suggestions for improvement involve working on police/minority group relations, as

well as building appropriate departmental infrastructure.

JUSTICE RESEARCH AND POLICY, Vol. 3, No. 1, Spring 2001

© Justice Research and Statistics Association

This project was funded through the Bureau of Justice Statistics, Grant #98-BJ-CX-K010.

Points of view or opinions in this document are those of the authors and do not necessarily

represent the official position or policies of the funding source. The authors wish to thank

Susan Bennett and Amy Farrell, both at Northeastern, as well as Joan Weiss, Stan

Orchowsky, and Lisa Walbolt at the Justice Research and Statistics Association, Washington

D.C., for their insight throughout the project. An earlier version of this paper was presented

at the American Society of Criminology Annual Meeting in Toronto, 1999. Please direct

comments to: Jennifer Balboni, The Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research, 400

Churchill Hall, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115.

2 • Justice Research and Policy

How do we know whether the occurance of hate crime1 is increasing, decreasing,

or changing in this country? After 10 years of official hate crime data collection,

it is still difficult to know conclusively. Limited and often nominal participation

in hate crime reporting nationally makes any sort of prima facie interpretation of

hate crime data unfeasible. With non-hate crimes (for instance, burglary, robbery,

or non-hate assault), research has established some relationship between certain

variables2 and the victim’s motivation for reporting, or declining to report, the

crime to law enforcement. Using these variables, educated estimates are made

regularly about the true prevalence of such crimes. Hate crimes, however, present

a new set of issues for both the victim and the police that affect crime reporting

patterns, including how much validity officers assign to distinguishing hate crime as

a separate category, whether the department has an infrastructure to process hate

crimes as separate offenses, and minority relations with the police in their community.

Before using the data to speculate about the scope of hate crime in America,

it is prudent to understand what these data tell us and why. This paper will

explore these variables using a nationally stratified survey of law enforcement

officers, as well as interviews with advocacy and human rights agency

professionals. Before discussing the current project, this paper will briefly

summarize 10 years of official data on hate crimes.

*Hate Crime Reporting History

Over the past 10 years, the debate about how to classify and treat hate crimes

has steadily intensified. Political and legislative landscapes are quickly changing

to incorporate hate crime provisions, either for law enforcement officers,

prosecutors, or community groups. The Hate Crimes Statistics Act (HCSA) of

1990 was the first major piece of national legislation designed to organize efforts

to collect data about hate crime. This legislation mandated that the Attorney

General collect and report data on hate crimes to the Uniform Crime Reporting

(UCR) Program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). Although this legislation

is significant, in practice it has not had the bite legislators hoped it would.

Appropriate compliance with the terms specified in HCSA has yet to occur.

By 1998, 7,755 law enforcement agencies had reported something in the

hate crime category to the UCR (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1995–1998).

1 The terms “hate” and “bias” will be used interchangeably in this paper.

2 These variables include the amount stolen, the victim’s perception that police can

help, and others. See Gove, Hughes, & Geerken, 1985, Hindelang, 1974, and Block,

1974 for a discussion of official crime statistics.