Senate Judiciary Hearing: Statement on Hate Crimes : ICAAD

Statement of ICAAD on Hate Crimes and Domestic Terrorism before the Senate Judiciary Committee

HATE CRIMES ANALYSIS

Issue 1: Create Anti-Sikh Hate Crimes Code on 1-699 UCR Form: An Anti-Sikh hate crimes code is necessary for proper allocation of law enforcement resources that recognize the Sikh community as especially vulnerable to bias motivated crimes because of their external religious identity.

Issue 2: Patrol Guides Across the Country Should Include Bias Motivated Incident Procedure:Integrating model hate crimes guidelines into local law enforcement Patrol Guides is imperative for proper investigation and documentation of hate crimes. Such a mechanism would immediately ensure that local law enforcement provide comprehensive training and remain accountable for their officers’ proper implementation of hate crimes investigation and documentation procedure.

Issue 3: Hate Crimes Task Force/ NGO and Local Community Collaboration Must be Revitalized: Strengthening of local hate crimes task forces and collaboration with NGOs on training, data collection, and community engagement is necessary if UCR statistics are going to reflect the true nature of hate crimes.

Issue 4: Hate Crimes Reporting Must be Mandated for All Law Enforcement Agencies: More than a decade ago, the Bureau of Justice Assistance recommended that policymakers support or sponsor legislation in States without data collection laws, mandating agencies to collect and report hate crimes.

Issue 5: Victim Demographics is Crucial Data for Law Enforcement Data and NGOs: The Hate Crime Incident Form (1-699) does not include victim demographics information. However, New York State has included this data in their own Hate Crime Incident Report. Though the NY Report provides space to code racial and ethnic groups, they do not have a column for religion. Coding of victims’ religious identity will provide for the potential to disaggregate data and ultimately capture crucial information that can serve to protect vulnerable communities, including religious communities.

Issue 6: When the Perpetrators Intended Target is Unclear: When the perpetrators criminal act is a result of his/her bias motivation, but it is unclear that the victim(s) was the intended target, the controlling factor in coding the bias incident should be the victim(s) identity or affiliation to a particular group (e.g. religious, racial, ethnic etc.).