FARAI CHIDEYA, host:
From NPR News, this is NEWS & NOTES. I'm Farai Chideya.
It's been almost 40 years since Congress passed its first laws against hate crimes. Fast forward to 2007, hate crimes get reported more frequently than ever, but the FBI's annual statistics show that law enforcement in some parts of the country may not be telling the whole story. For example, according to the latest report, California had almost 1,300 hate crimes in 2006; Mississippi reported none. The discrepancies have raised red flags with some civil rights organizations. And in a moment, we'll hear from a nonprofit that tracks hate crimes.
But first, we're joined by Darrell Foxworth. He is the FBI's public information officer. Welcome. Thanks for coming on.
Darrell, how does the FBI define a hate crime?
Mr. DARELL FOXWORTH (Public Information Officer, Federal Bureau of Investigation): Yes.
CHIDEYA: Yes. Hi. How does the FBI define a hate crime?
Mr. FOXWORTH: The FBI defines a hate crime as a traditional offense like murder, arson or vandalism with an added element of bias. For the purposes of the collecting - the statistics which were used in the hate crimes, Congress has defined a hate crime as a criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin, or sexual orientation.
CHIDEYA: Now, let's say that I come home, I find racial slurs spray painted all over my house and I want to report it as a hate crime, what is the process for that and how would that report reach the FBI?
Mr. FOXWORTH: Well, if you see yourself as a victim of a hate crime in a situation where you would come home and you would find derogatory information which may have racial slurs on your property, the procedure for reporting that is you would contact your local law enforcement agency. What they would do is they would respond, collect all the facts concerning that - the evidence that is present at your residence - and try to make a determination initially as to whether this is something which would be classified as a hate crime.
Now, when a responding officer shows up, what they're looking for - what you're trying to determine is the motivation of the offender. You're also looking at are the victim and the offender from different racial, religious, ethnic or sexual orientation group. Does the victim perceive that the offender's actions were bias motivated and are there clear motivations for the offense?
And then, lastly, what you're also looking at is did the offender make any bias remarks concerning the victim's race, religion, ethnicity, disability or sexual orientation or leave offensive symbols, objects, graffiti at the scene. So you're taking the totality of the circumstances there and seeing if this meets the elements of a hate crime.
CHIDEYA: Now, you're compiling statistics, but the local police authorities, from what I understand, are not required to gather and report them. How does that affect your report?
Mr. FOXWORTH: Well, the statistics that we used to - come from the Uniform Crime Report and also the National Incident-Based Reporting System; this is completely voluntary, just like the Uniform Crime Reports. So how that affects our report is that all the agencies that are participants were able to provide them with feedback information as far as the number of reported offenses in their jurisdiction. Those agencies that do not report were not able to provide that information to them. But this is something that, once we do report the information to them, they can then take this information, use it, and come up with strategies and procedures which might enhance their ability to address these matters.
CHIDEYA: So in your 2006 report that just came out, Mississippi reports no hate crimes. Do you ever send a note back saying, are you sure?
Mr. FOXWORTH: That's something that - there again, this is a voluntary report. From time to time, we do go out and reach out to these law enforcement agencies and bring certain information to their attention that either that there's no information from their jurisdiction and provide them guidance on how they can report these incidents. But it's - there again, this is completely voluntary.
CHIDEYA: Now, do you think that there is going to be a rise in the 2007 numbers that come out next year because of incidents around the nooses that were basically posted in different places all over the country after the Jena Six incident came to light?
Mr. FOXWORTH: I don't have any preliminary numbers at this time to tell you whether the 2007 incidents would be greater than the 2006 incidents. What I can tell you is that for 2006, there were 7,720 incidents ,and of those, 51.8 percent were considered racial bias crimes, 18.9 percent were religious bias, 15.5 were sexual orientation, and about 13 percent had to do with the ethnicity, national origin. And looking at that, we also were able to come up with the offender profiles and the offenders show that, of the agencies that reported - 58.6 - the offenders were classified as white, 20.6 were classified as black, 12.9 percent were unknown, and the rest were other.
CHIDEYA: Well, Darrell, thank you so much.
Mr. FOXWORTH: Okay. Thank you.
CHIDEYA: You're - Darrell Foxworth is the public information officer for the FBI.
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