Hate Crime

Organization or Publication

California Department of Justice

A hate crime is a crime against a person, group, or property motivated by the victim’s real or perceived protected social group. You may be the victim of a hate crime if you have been targeted because of your actual or perceived: (1) disability, (2) gender, (3) nationality, (4) race or ethnicity, (5) religion, (6) sexual orientation, and (7) association with a person or group with one or more of these actual or perceived characteristics. Hate crimes are serious crimes that may result in imprisonment or jail time.

A hate incident is an action or behavior motivated by hate but which, for one or more reasons, is not a crime. Examples of hate incidents include:

Name-calling
Insults
Displaying hate material on your own property.
Posting hate material that does not result in property damage.
Distribution of materials with hate messages in public places.

The U.S. Constitution allows hate speech as long as it does not interfere with the civil rights of others. While these acts are certainly hurtful, they do not rise to the level of criminal violations and thus may not be prosecuted. However, it is important to note that these incidents have a traumatic impact on the victims as well as on the community at large.

Source Title: “What Californians Need to Know to Protect Themselves and Others”

DOI / ISBN / Link: https://oag.ca.gov/hatecrimes

Source Type: Web article

Country: USA

Tags: Educational | Governmental

The Conversation

Hate crimes are crimes motivated by bias on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation or ethnicity. In some states, gender, age and gender identity are also included. Hate crime laws have been passed by 47 states and the federal government since the 1980s, when activists first began to press state legislatures to recognize the role of bias in violence against minority groups. Today, only Arkansas, South Carolina and Wyoming do not have hate crime laws.

In order to be charged as a hate crime, attacks – whether assault, killings or vandalism – must be directed at individuals because of the prohibited biases. Hate crimes, in other words, punish motive; the prosecutor must convince the judge or jury that the victim was targeted because of their race, religion, sexual orientation or other protected characteristic.

If the defendant is found to have acted with bias motivation, hate crimes often add an additional penalty to the underlying charge. Charging people with a hate crime, then, presents additional layers of complexity to what may otherwise be a straightforward case for prosecutors. Bias motivation can be hard to prove, and prosecutors can be reluctant to take cases that that they may not win in court.

Individual Author(s): Bell, Jeannine

Source Title: “What is a hate crime? The narrow legal definition makes it hard to charge and convict”

DOI / ISBN / Link: https://theconversation.com/what-is-a-hate-crime-the-narrow-legal-definition-makes-it-hard-to-charge-and-convict-157488

Source Type: Web article

Country: USA

Year: 2021

Tags: Scholarly | Educational

Department of Justice Canada

Hate crimes are criminal acts done by a person who is motivated by an extreme bias or hatred towards a particular social group (CRRF 2020). Hate crimes may be directed at physical, symbolic targets (such as a mosque) or at individuals or groups of people. Research studies show that hate crimes cause “disproportionate harm” to individual victims as well as other members of the community belonging to the targeted social group. These crimes send a message of rejection towards both the target of the crime and their community. For example, an assault can have negative physical and psycho-emotional effects. If the assault occurs because you are a Black person (or a person with a disability or transfemale), the harm is magnified because you cannot change these characteristics of who you are and are at risk of being targeted all your life. Not only are you at risk, but everyone else who looks like you, or has a disability or practices a minority religion or any other immutable characteristic in your family, your community, Canada and even beyond our borders.

Across Canada, police services use a single definition of hate crime to ensure that the data they collect and report on are consistent and can be compared. The definition is found in the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey (UCR) Manual (2022, 89):

Hate crime is defined as a criminal violation motivated by hate, based on race, national or ethnic origin, language, colour, religion, sex, age, mental or physical disability, sexual orientation or gender identity or expression, or any other similar factor.

Individual Author(s): Anna Ndegwa and Susan McDonald

Source Title: “Hate Crimes in Canada”

Link / DOI / ISBN: https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/rp-pr/cj-jp/victim/rd16-rr16/p1.html

Document Type: Web article

Tags: Scholarly | Governmental

Country: Canada

Year: 2023

Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI)

A hate crime is a traditional offense like murder, arson, or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of collecting statistics, the FBI has defined a hate crime as a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity. Hate itself is not a crime—and the FBI is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties.

Source Title: “Hate Crimes”

Link / DOI / ISBN: https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/civil-rights/hate-crimes

Source Type: Web article

Tags: Governmental

Country: USA

Year: 2025

Journal of Policing, Intelligence and Counter Terrorism

Hate crimes and terrorism share a number of similar traits. For example, they both act as message crimes aimed to instil fear and modify behaviour (Lim, 2009). In the case of hate crime, an individual is targeted because of their perceived group membership. Thus, the attack is not only sending a message to the individual but also to the wider group to which the victim belongs (Mills, Freilich, & Chermak, 2017). An act of terrorism also has the aim of sending a message to a civilian population or the government. Munthe and Brax (2017) f ind significant psychological overlap between hate crimes and acts of terror in that some hate crimes have ‘terror-like functions’ for communities and even society at large (p. 322). The overlap between terrorism and hate crimes has led some scholars to label them as ‘close cousins’ (Mills et al., 2017). Other scholars disagree, arguing that the differences outweigh the similarities and that the two are distinct forms of violence that more closely resemble ‘distant relatives’ (Deloughery, King, & Asal, 2012). They emphasise differences such as the seemingly spontaneous nature of many hate crimes compared with the more careful planning that generally occurs in the lead up to an act of terrorism. They also point out that many perpetrators of hate crimes do not seek publicity for their acts, whereas terrorists are more likely to use publicity to further their goals (Deloughery et al., 2012; Norris, 2017).

The grey area between domestic terrorism and hate crime suggests that, in some instances, perpetrators espousing domestic extremist ideologies may be incorrectly charged with hate crimes when the crime more accurately reflects an act of terrorism (Bjelopera, 2017). Some have argued that given the severity of hate crime charges that can be applied, this constitutes as sufficient punishment for offences which may have been more accurately labelled as domestic terrorism (Austin & Clarke, 2019). However, as Sinnar (2019) points out, in the case of sentencing enhancements a terrorism sentencing enhancement is significantly higher (an additional 210–262 months added to a sentence) compared with a hate crime enhancement (70–80 months) (p. 1359). Yet terrorism and hate crimes need not be treated as mutually exclusive. It is possible for a criminal act to be described as both.

Individual Author(s): Taylor, Helen

Source Title: “Domestic Terrorism and Hate Crimes: Legal Definitions and Media Framing of Mass Shootings in the United States”

DOI / ISBN / Link: https://doi.org/10.1080/18335330.2019.1667012

Source Type: Journal article

Country: USA

Year: 2019

Tags: Scholarly

Find it at UCLA: https://search.library.ucla.edu/permalink/01UCS_LAL/192ecse/cdi_crossref_citationtrail_10_1080_18335330_2019_1667012

Republic of South Africa

(1) A hate crime is—

(a) an offence recognised under any law (herein after referred to as an ‘‘underlying offence’’), excluding the common law offence of crimen injuria or an offence referred to in section 4(1); and

(b) committed by a person who is motivated by their prejudice or intolerance—

(i) towards the victim, the victim’s family member or the victim’s association with or support for a person with one or more characteristics or a group of persons who share one or more of the characteristics; and

(ii) which was based on one or more of the actual or perceived characteristics. (p. 8)

Source Title: Prevention and Combating of Hate Crimes and Hate Speech Act

Link / DOI / ISBN: https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/202405/50652preventionandcombatingofhatecrimesandhatespeech162023.pdf

Document Type: Legislation

Country: South Africa

Year: 2023

Tags: Governmental

Metropolitan Police

In most crimes it is something the victim has in their possession or control that motivates the offender to commit the crime. With hate crime it is ‘who’ the victim is, or ‘what’ the victim appears to be that motivates the offender to commit the crime.

A hate crime is defined as ‘Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person’s race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.’

A hate incident is any incident which the victim, or anyone else, thinks is based on someone’s prejudice towards them because of their race, religion, sexual orientation, disability or because they are transgender.

Evidence of the hate element is not a requirement. You do not need to personally perceive the incident to be hate related. It would be enough if another person, a witness or even a police officer thought that the incident was hate related.

Source Title: “What is hate crime?”

DOI / ISBN / Link: https://www.met.police.uk/ro/report/hate-crime/information/v1/hate-crime/what-is-hate-crime/

Source Type: Web article

Country: UK

Tags: Educational | Governmental

Safeguarding Network

Hate crimes target people for who they are (their identity) or what they appear to be. Hate crime sends a very personal message to its victim and reinforces long-established patterns of discrimination and prejudice against certain communities and groups of people.

Any crime can be prosecuted as a hate crime if the offender has demonstrated, or been motivated by hostility or prejudice, as outlined by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) below.

Hate crime is related to bullying, in that bullying often features hostility and prejudice towards real or perceived difference.

Someone can be a victim of more than one type of hate crime.

Source Title: “Hate Crimes”

DOI / ISBN / Link: https://safeguarding.network/content/safeguarding-resources/bullying/hate-crimes/

Source Type: Web article

Country: UK

Year: 2025

Tags: Educational | Nonprofit

Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)

The starting point for understanding hate crimes and their impact is to recognize that criminal activity motivated by bias is different from other criminal conduct. First, these crimes occur because of the perpetrator’s bias or animus against the victim on the basis of actual or perceived status. The victim’s race, religion, ethnicity, gender, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability is the reason for the crime. In the vast majority of these crimes, absent the victim’s personal characteristics, no crime would occur at all.

Second, because hate violence is intentionally and specifically targeted at individuals because of their personal, immutable characteristics, they are very personal crimes with particular emotional and psychological impacts on the victim – and the victim’s community. Hate crimes physically wound and may effectively intimidate other members of the victim’s community, leaving them feeling terrorized, isolated, vulnerable and unprotected by the law. By making the victim’s community fearful, angry and suspicious of other groups – and of the power structure that is supposed to protect them – these incidents can damage the fabric of our society and fragment communities.

Individual Author(s): Michael Lieberman

Source Title: “Hate Crimes, Explained”

DOI / ISBN / Link: https://www.splcenter.org/resources/reports/hate-crimes-explained/

Source Type: Web article

Country: USA

Year: 2024

Tags: Educational | Advocacy | Nonprofit

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