Understanding the Community-Level Factors That Contribute to Hate Crimes

A hate crime is a criminal act where the offender targets someone based on bias against the victim’s actual or perceived minority group status. The FBI reported 6,121 documented hate crime incidents in 2016, an increase of 10 percent since 2014. Political scientist Richard Fording and criminologist Matthew Nobles will analyze the community-level factors that contribute to hate crime commission, using 2,500 reports of hate crimes from the National Criminal Victimization Survey (NCVS) for the 2006-2017 period. They will focus on the effects of the local political environment and state hate crime laws on hate crime commission.