Increase In Hate Crimes

"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,

only about 11% of law enforcement agencies participating in the program submitted hate crime data for the report.

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

largest departments in the country have failed to report cases that his organization has validated as hate crimes”- (Petualla). While that explains the problem of 88% of law agencies having 0% of any type of hate crimes, it also arises some new problems. If reports of hate crimes are going unreported or misfiled, then the reports we receive on hate crimes spiking in the US are inadequate. Hate crimes can also be filed as simple assault or aggravated assault. Four out of ten people known as hate crime offenders only committed simple assault, but almost one quarter committed aggravated assault. A report has also identified 1,600 people vandalizing or destroying property. A change is needed because hate crimes are more common than ever in the U.S, and there has been up to a 10% increase from 2014.

All hate crimes are bad. All types of hate crimes aimed at people for their race or religion not only harm the individual people, but also the entire community and strikes fear into everyone. "No person should have to fear being violently attacked because of who they are, what they believe, of how they worship,”- (Sessions).