Increase in Hate Crimes Spur Legislation
New California Media, Julie Johnson, Posted: Oct 08, 2002
Governor Gray Davis signed one of three bills designed to stem the increase in hates crimes in the state since Sept. 11.
California has seen prejudice-motivated assaults rise 15.5 percent in 2001, at least those reported, according to a recent annual hate crimes report from District Attorney General Bill Lockyer. Lockyer attributes the rise to a backlash from the Sept. 11 attacks. He said in a public statement that the overall number of hate crimes reported last year theoretically would have decreased 5 percent from a year earlier if not for the bias motivated assaults against Californians victimized because they are Muslim or appeared to be of Middle Eastern descent.
Department of Fair Employment and Housing Director Dennis Hayashi also noted the trend. “Just after the tragic events of Sept. 11, we began to see a second wave of attacks against innocent residents of our state simply because they were perceived to be Middle Eastern or belong to a particular religion.”
“Many of these victims were so traumatized by these unprovoked, hateful acts that they were reluctant to come forward at the time,” Hayashi said.
Assembly member Judy Chu, Chair of the Hate Crimes Assembly, authored recent hate crimes legislation presented to Governor Davis. Davis signed one of the three bills, the Hate Crimes Prosecution Bill on Sept. 23. This bill will promote vertical prosecution and create provisions should the prosecuting attorney assigned to the case have a trial-related scheduling conflict, placing hate crimes in the same category as other highly sensitive crimes, such as stalking, child abuse and domestic violence, which also contain continuance clauses.
Without vertical prosecution, one deputy may be put on the preliminary hearing, another deputy may participate in negotiations, and a third deputy may prosecute if the case goes to trial. By maintaining a single prosecutor on the case, the DA hopes to encourage better relations between the victims and law enforcement and improve the success rate of prosecuting hate crime offenders.
With vertical prosecution units, prosecutors are more likely to be specially trained to deal with the specialized issues involved, Chu said.
Of the two pending bills, the Youth Anti-Bias Pilot Project bill would establish an education program for juvenile offenders and the Repeat Hate Crime Offender Felony Enhancement would enable a repeat offender's crimes to be elevated from a misdemeanor to felony status.
Along with fear of retaliation by the perpetrator, victims of hate crimes also face the biases of those gathering the data in their districts as well as the problematic nature of the actual reporting, especially when it comes to defining the parameters of what constitutes a hate crime. According to a 2001 FBI report, a major impediment in analyzing the current state of hate crimes is widespread misreporting by law enforcement jurisdictions. Often, jurisdictions will report crime instances as zero, when they are really not documented as such, creating misleading “false zeroes.” The report also cited that law enforcement jurisdictions in at least 10 states failed entirely to report any hate crimes in 1999.
Low self-esteem, cultural barriers, distrust of law enforcement, and the fear that they somehow bear responsibility prevent many victims from reporting crimes. Undocumented immigrants who have been subjected to hate crimes also face the fear of being deported should they file a report.
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