BIASCRIME
Bias crime represents the nadir of intergroup relation-
ships and contact. Prejudice and bigotry give rise to
bias crime, and bigotry accompanies bias offenses.
Protected categories of victims according to the bias
crime statutes include ethnic, racial, religious, and sex-
ual minorities as well as those with mental or physical
disability status. Although debate about the criminal-
ization of bias motives abounds, most of those who
study bias crime agree that combating these types of
offenses is important. This is because bias crime is dif-
ferent from similarly egregious crimes; the effects of
bias crime extend well beyond the initial victim. There
are physical, psychological, financial, and societal
costs associated with this from of criminal activity.
Most people have a sense of what is meant by prej-
udice, and social scientists use the term to refer to a
negative attitude that occurs when people prejudge
disliked others. Those who are the targets of prejudice
are disliked and perceived to be members of a partic-
ular social group. The term bigotry refers to extreme,
and often blatant, forms of prejudice. Although both
terms refer to a bias in the perception of others, prej-
udice can in rare cases refer to positive attitudes and
reactions, whereas bigotry is exclusively reserved for
negative attitudes. It is the latter set of reactions to a
disliked individual or group of individuals (i.e., big-
otry) that is most likely to spawn bias crimes.
Bias crimes involve a unique form of illegal, anti-
social (and sometimes aggressive) behavior perpe-
trated primarily because of what the intended target
represents. Definitions of bias crime vary, but defini-
tions such as that of the Anti-Defamation League of
B’nai B’rith (ADL) tend to focus on the motivation of
the offender as well as the group status of the targeted
victim. According to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation (FBI) of the U.S. Department of Justice,
a bias crime is “a criminal act that targets a person,
property, or society and is motivated, in whole or in
part, by the offender’s bias against a race, religion,
disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity/national ori-
gin.” Bias crimes “are traditional offenses motivated
by the offender’s bias.”
The negative sentiment that drives bias crime
offenders is so central and distinguishing a feature
that the term hate crimeis often used to describe these
actions. Hate crime puts the extreme negative emotion
(i.e., the affective state) front and center. Althoughmost people can readily identify with an offense char-
acterized as a hate crime because of an almost vis-
ceral familiarity with that very negative emotion,
some scholars debate the accuracy of this label. They
argue that it is not always the case that the sentiment
that motivates bias crime offenders is hate. Indeed, as
the specialists James Jacobs and colleagues contend,
hate crime is less about “hate” per se and more about
bias or prejudice.
To be sure, the problem of bias crime is real, and
because of the inherently social aspect of these
offenses, they must be viewed within a particular con-
text. According to Gregory Herek and colleagues, bias
offenses generally occur “against a backdrop of intoler-
ance.” They represent the manifestation of deep-seated
resentment and bigotry coupled with opportunity and
disinhibition. Disinhibitionhas long been regarded as a
necessary psychological feature in a person’s decision
to actually commit an antisocial or aggressive action.
For the bias crime offender, disinhibition can occur in
several ways. Potential bias crime offenders become
disinhibited (i.e., releasing the proverbial brake) when
they are prompted by like-minded others, when they
can rationalize and justify their aggression, or when
they believe that conventional authority figures con-
done their actions.Bias Crime in the United States
According to recent statistics released by the FBI,
7,163 criminal incidents involving 8,380 offenses
were reported in 2005 as a result of an extreme preju-
dice or bias. The greatest proportion of these incidents
resulted from racial and ethnic animus (there were
3,919), with African Americans representing the most
frequently targeted racial group. This is not surprising
given that racial (i.e., anti-Black) prejudice has played
so prominent a role in determining the nature of inter-
group relations within the United States and because
skin color represents a primary and salient marker for
racial status.
Bias crimes in the United States have assumed
many forms and have ranged from nonviolent to egre-
gious and harmful. They include physical and verbal
transgressions stemming from a perpetrator’s bigotry
or extreme prejudice. These transgressions can
include defamation, threat and intimidation, verbal
abuse, and physical assault or homicide, as well as
offenses to property including arson, defacement, and
vandalism. Many bias crimes against property assumeBias Crime——— 47B-Cutler (Encyc)-45463.qxd 11/18/2007 12:41 PM Page 47