Hate Crime (Issues in Measurement)
Bitna Kim, Ashley Dickinson · The Encyclopedia of Criminology and Criminal Justice · 2013
Abstract Hate crime is defined as an illegal act against a person, institution, or property that is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender's bias against the victim's perceived group membership. Since the late 1980s and early 1990s, the federal government and states have collected data on hate crime occurrences. However, for a number of reasons, including existing differences in group coverage between federal and state laws and across states, the true rate of hate crime is reported differently across sources and overall it remains unknown.