Criminal offenses committed by someone because of the actual or perceived group characteristics of another person such as race or ethnicity. Over the past two decades, these crimes of discrimination have become the focus of increased media, legislative and law-enforcement attention in the US. Over forty states and the federal government have some form of hate-crime law. The most frequently protected categories (in descending order) are race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation and disability Many state hate-crime laws have penalties that are too light or coverage that is incomplete. For instance, most states leave gays and lesbians outside of their protections.

The application of federal civil-rights law to hate crime is also substantially limited by very narrow enumerated requirements. Attempts in 1997 and 1998 to broaden federal law failed in congressional committees.

Hate crimes may also go unreported and are often misclassified by law enforcement when reported. Only a small fraction of hate crimes are actually prosecuted under hatecrime statutes. There are two main types of hate-crime statutes—stand-alone civil-rights statutes and penaltyenhancement statutes. Stand-alone civil-rights laws generally punish discriminatory crimes that violate a victim’s civil rights on the basis of a protectedstatus category like race. Penalty-enhancement laws increase the punishment for an underlying crime, such as an assault, when it is committed by an offender with a discriminatory motivation against a protected group category.

The United States Supreme Court unanimously upheld the constitutionality of hatecrime penalty-enhancement statutes in the 1993 case of Wisconsin v. Mitchell. In a case the previous year, RAV v. St. Paul, however, the Supreme Court invalidated a poorly drafted municipal ordinance that punished the use of threatening symbols based on the ideology conveyed. Cross burning and other types of threats could be criminalized, the court held, but the law must not target the offender’s underlying belief. That court decision also had the effect of invalidating “hate-speech” codes at public colleges that punished students for expressing bigoted ideas about others.

The FBI, which has been keeping statistics since 1991, reported 8,734 hate-crime incidents in 1996. Race accounted for 61.6 percent of attacks, followed by religiousbased attacks (15.9 percent), sexual-orientation-based attacks (11.6 percent) and ethnicity-based attacks (10.7 percent). African Americans were targeted for 42 percent of all hate crimes, while Jews were also targeted (13 percent). Some cities and states, particularly in rural or southern areas, did not meaningfully participate in the FBI’s datacollection effort.

Over 90 percent of hate crimes are not committed by hate-group members or hard-core hate mongers; about half are committed by young people under the age of twenty-one.

Many who commit these crimes do so for excitement as part of a group activity with friends. Offenders usually rely on false or exaggerated stereotypes of a victim’s group to justify the attack.

Unlike crimes in general, hate crimes are disproportionately directed against individuals as opposed to property. These victimizations are much more likely to involve injury serial attacks, groups of offenders and subsequent civil disorder than non-hate crimes.