While authorities continue to investigate whether the shooting of three Muslim-Americans in Chapel Hill, N.C. Tuesday constituted a hate crime, criminologist Jack Levin says hate crimes in the country are underreported and infrequently prosecuted.
Prosecutors must show that the perpetrator’s motivation was primarily driven by bias. “You have to show that the difference between the perpetrator and the victim was a major determinant,” said Levin, a professor of sociology and criminology at Northeastern University. He has studied and written about hate crime, mass murderers, serial killers, and other violent criminals for over 25 years.
A Killer’s Motive
Determining motivation requires getting inside the mind of the perpetrator—an extremely difficult task for investigators. Some signs police typically look for are: whether the perpetrator voiced any slurs or epithets, left graffiti at the crime scene, or committed the crime in a location where similar hate crimes had been committed before.
But because of the high burden of proof to show the suspect’s motivation, hate crimes are seldom prosecuted, Levin says. A total of 5,928 hate crime incidents were reported to local law enforcement across the country in 2013, according to the latest data collected by the FBI. This number is far smaller than the 293,800 people over 12 who reported that they were victims of hate crimes in 2012, according to the latest U.S. Department of Justice survey.
