Increase In Hate Crimes

550 Words2 Pages

"Hate crime is different from other crime,"...."They strike at our sense of self, our sense of belonging. The end result is loss: loss of trust, loss of dignity, and in the worst case, loss of life”- (Comey). All crimes are committed with hate in mind. Because of that, it is hard to count how many crimes are being committed out of hate. Hate crimes have increased by over 5,800 from 2014. Hate crimes have been steadily rising for two years straight. Hate crimes are more popular than ever in the U.S., and people are wondering why. In recent studies, there has been a 5% increase in hate crimes since 2015, and a whopping 10% increase since 2014. “Shortcomings in the data are inevitable given that the FBI relies on voluntary participation by law enforcement, says Singh. This year, …show more content…

The FBI publishes its hate crime statistics based on the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. The UCR is routinely criticized for undercounting crimes”- (Petulla). For instance, 11% of the UCR reported their findings, so one could only assume that there are more out there. Past research has dug up that as many as 85 law agencies registered in cities with over 100,000 people did not participate. 85 law agencies!. To put it to scale, one 2010 census report found 285 cities with populations of about 100,000. Further illustrating my point, , according to an FBI claim, a total of 88% of law agencies willingly cooperating with the UCR claimed that there were ZERO hate crimes. As hate crimes have grown within 10% as of 2016, 88% of law agencies are saying they encountered 0% of any kind of hate crime. While the other 22% is saying that hate crimes have increased by over 1,000 within the past year. “Schwencke explained some of the reasons the report is inadequate. Many victims do not report the crimes and even if they do, police departments often apply different criteria for tracking and reporting the crimes internally and to the FBI. In some cases, the

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