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Religious Motivated Hate Crimes: Reporting to Law Enforcement and Case Outcomes

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Abstract

Relative to non-bias motivated crimes, hate crimes have much graver consequences for victims and their community. Despite the large increase in religious hate crimes over the past decade relative to all other hate crime, little is known about these types of crimes and the factors associated with both reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Utilizing the National Crime Victimization Survey and National Incident-Based Reporting System datasets, this study examines the relationship between victim, offender, and incident characteristics on reporting to law enforcement and case outcomes. Most religious hate crimes are not reported (41.3 %) in part due to perceptions of law enforcement’s perceived response. Of the violent incidents that are reported, the vast majority do not result in the arrest of an offender (22.2 %). Whereas only a small number of variables related to the seriousness of the offense are associated with both reporting and arrest, these exhibited large effect sizes.

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Notes

  1. The terms ‘hate crime’ and ‘bias crime’ are used interchangeably.

  2. While “anti-Semitic” is more common, we use anti-Jewish to be consistent with the terminology used by the FBI.

  3. Despite being committed by a white right-wing extremist, Muslims were initially presumed to be behind the attack.

  4. Importantly, victims may receive compensation even if the case does not result in arrest or conviction.

  5. In 2010, the NCVS was modified to include additional questions on evidence of a hate crime (e.g., presence of hate symbols, whether the police confirmed it).

  6. The UCR Handbook (Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2004, pp. 149) allows a crime to be cleared by arrest or exceptional means. While the latter is rare, it occurs as a result of some element beyond law enforcement control which prevents the filing of formal charges against the offender (e.g., victim refuses to cooperate with prosecution, extradition is denied, death of the offender).

  7. Results from the estimated multilevel model were consistent concerning their direction, effect size, and significance.

  8. Three cases were removed for the analysis due to missing data on the dependent variable.

  9. For instance, Nelson et al. (2015) combined the categories of anti-Arab and anti-Muslim.

  10. The authors would like to thank an anonymous reviewer for noting this limitation.

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Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice under Grant No. 2013-R2-CX-0033. The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the Department of Justice.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice, East Carolina University, 245 Rivers Building, Greenville, NC, 27858, USA

    Scott M. Walfield

  2. School of Criminology and Justice Studies, University of Massachusetts Lowell, 113 Wilder Street, Suite 400, Lowell, MA, 01854, USA

    Kelly M. Socia

  3. Department of Criminology, University of South Florida, 4202 E Fowler Ave, SOC 107, Tampa, FL, 33620, USA

    Ráchael A. Powers

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Correspondence to Scott M. Walfield.

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Walfield, S.M., Socia, K.M. & Powers, R.A. Religious Motivated Hate Crimes: Reporting to Law Enforcement and Case Outcomes. Am J Crim Just 42, 148–169 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-016-9349-3

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