Most states have legislation that increases the penalty for a crime if bias is a motive. The feeling has been that society is more threatened by group hatred than by traditional motives for crime like greed or wrath.

The impetus for these laws was public revulsion at a series of well-publicized attacks against homosexuals, as well as the actions of organized hate groups. But for the purposes of gathering and publishing crime data, there is no distinction made between the actions of organized groups and those of prejudiced individuals.

For over 10 years there have been federally-sponsored programs to collect and publish statistical information about bias-related incidents, generally known as hate crimes. The FBI now includes a Hate Crimes Report as part of its respected Uniform Crime Reports. Institutions of Higher Learning are required to detail bias-related incidents as part of their reporting of campus crime to the U.S. Department of Education under the Clery Act. (This results in a considerable burden, says Capt. Michael Coleman of the UVa Police, since each report must be assessed according to the differing guidelines for the UCRs and Clery.)

Yet the quality of data collection and reporting varies so widely from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and state to state as to cast strong doubt on the reliability of the reports. According to Dewey G. Cornell, Assoc. Prof. at UVa's Curry School of Education and Director of the Virginia Youth Violence Project , "I would not place any confidence in current [Hate Crime] statistics because of the problems of defining this kind of crime and getting ... law enforcement ... to use [them] in a consistent manner."

What kinds of bias can be related to an incident?

Incidents are classified as being motivated by bias against an individual because of:

• Race
• Religion
• Sexual Orientation
• Ethnicity or National Origin
• Disability, Mental or Physical
• Multiple Bias

How is data transmitted?

A report was commissioned on "Improving the Quality and Accuracy of Bias Crime Statistics ...." by the Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research at the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University and the Justice Research and Statistics Association of Washington D.C. It lists a number of key decision points that must be triggered along the path for a hate crime to show up in the Crime Reports:

• Victim understanding that a crime has been committed
• Victim recognition that hate (of the victim's real or perceived minority status or attribute) may be a motivating factor
• Victim or another party solicits law enforcement intervention
• Victim or another party communicates with law enforcement about motivation of the crime
• Law enforcement recognizes the element of hate
• Law Enforcement documents the element of hate and, as appropriate, charges suspect with civil rights or hate/bias offense
• Law enforcement records the incident
• Law enforcement or other agency submits the information to the Uniform Crime Reports, Hate Crime Reporting Unit

In the City of Charlottesville and Albemarle County, incident reports are completed by the investigating officer, and they include a check-box for "bias related" incidents. Members of the clerical staff compile the data in the incident reports, including the BRI tag, for transmittal to the Virginia State Police as part of the Uniform Crime Reporting program. The State Police in turn file these reports quarterly with the FBI.

The University Police handle incidents both on-grounds and adjacent to them. Reports of these incidents are sent to the State Police, with the 'bias-related incident' tag employed where appropriate. Because the City or County Police may be called in, duplicate reports may wind up being filed.

Incidents are not all reported

There are problems gathering the data - in addition to the obvious pitfalls in the chain of reporting outlined above:

• Minorities, gays, and many at the margins of society may be reluctant to deal with police even when victimized.
• The "bias motivation" tag is sometimes lost during the processing of crime reports, either locally or in transmittal to the state agency.
• Incidents may not be reported as Hate Crimes by the police because of a fear of the local media reaction.
• Local reports are sometimes susceptible to local political influence: the "powers that be" don't want to give the locality a bad name.
• Some states (notably Alabama) rarely or never report, despite having a state policy of compliance. And Hawaii will not report, as a matter of policy.
• State law often defines these crimes differently from the federal reporting guidelines. For example, in charging people with crimes, Virginia only permits the hate crime definition to be attached to misdemeanor assault and trespass, and only for "race, religious conviction, color or national origin."

In an attempt to jump over some of the local issues, the FBI office in Richmond, in March of 2000, established a hot line (804-261-8146) for the public to report "suspected hate crime activity." The justification is given that "federal law enables the FBI to investigate a crime when … a crime is committed against a person because of … race, religion, disability or ethnicity."

Bad data is sometimes transmitted

• Local agencies with no incidents to report are sometimes lumped, at the state level, with agencies which did not report, resulting in 'false zeroes.' A report of "no incidents" is statistically quite different from "no report."
• A jurisdiction may define incidents differently from the reporting guidelines, leading to confusion.

A hanged man is drawn crudely on a student's door, at the University of Virginia. No one questioned knows who drew it, or why. The University Police decide that it may be bias-related, and files it as such. Because of reporting guidelines, according to Capt. Coleman of the University Police, the incident shows up in the FBI Report as bias-related, but not in the Clery reports. (Year in and year out, about 80% of the incidents reported to the FBI involve vandalism or harrassment with no suspect apprehended. This parenthetical remark is itself an example of the use of these statistics to make a point).

• Claims of victimization and bias may be made that are not warranted..
• And, it is thought, some localities have been excessively thorough in reporting in order to qualify for grant money.

Good data is sometimes not transmitted

• A smaller percentage of jurisdictions report from the South and Midwest
• Large urban areas, and the north in general, acquire and transmit information more reliably, resulting in over-reporting, for example, of black on white crime and possibly, under-reporting of hate-group activity.
• Changes in definitions, reporting periods, computer systems, etc. have resulted in faulty reporting.

The key issue is that advocates for many groups use these numbers to support and advance their positions: EURO and the ADL and GLBT groups and the NAACP ... and the FBI.

What can be done?

To remedy the flawed system, the Foundation report includes detailed recommendations in these areas:

• improving police-community relationships and raising the public awareness of bias crime
• developing formal policies for dealing with hate crimes
• hate crime training for local agency personnel
• improved data collection and reporting

The Southern Poverty Law Center is very concerned about the poor quality of the data in the FBI reports, and has run several articles on the subject. In one Intelligence report, Mark Potok, the editor, complains that "the statistics compiled and published yearly by the FBI vastly understate the hate crime problem."

Maryvictoria Pyne speaks for the FBI office that compiles the hate crime reports. She's been quoted recently as asking for critics to cut the FBI a little slack. "...When you're building a house and you look back on it when it's half-finished, you don't say it's a wreck."

No, but you don't live in it, either. (Dave Sagarin, March 11, 2002)