The legal framework surrounding hate crimes has persistently generated complex questions regarding their equitable implementation, both in theory and practical application. When these laws are enacted at the federal level, they introduce broader concerns, including the potential for overextension of federal criminal law and possible encroachments upon the constitutional prohibition against double jeopardy. Exacerbating these issues is the tendency for discussions around hate crimes to become rallying points in broader cultural debates.
The Challenge of Allegations and Public Discourse
A notable example of this public scrutiny occurred during the Jussie Smollett episode, where journalists faced criticism for raising doubts about the improbable elements of the actor’s initial account. At the time, the head of one progressive organization reportedly asserted that Smollett had been “doubly victimized as the subject of speculation by the media industry and broader culture,” even criticizing the cautious use of words like “allegedly” in media reports.
After Smollett’s narrative was discredited, some advocates countered that, regardless of the outcome in this specific instance, data unequivocally demonstrates a sharp increase in hate crimes, and that reports of such crimes are rarely proven false. This raises the critical question of the reliability and certainty of the available data.
Interpreting FBI Statistics
A frequently cited claim regarding the prevalence of hate crimes stems from official statistics. For instance, Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) once quoted FBI figures that “revealed a 17 percent increase in the number of hate crimes in America.”
These FBI figures, however, are subject to considerable challenges in their interpretation. Variations in reporting methods among jurisdictions can drastically skew the total count. For example, in 2017, the city of Eugene, Oregon, reported 72 hate crimes to the FBI—a number nearly equivalent to the rest of the state combined. According to the Daily Emerald, this discrepancy was attributed to “the city’s active approach. … The city carefully catalogs reported instances … and even classifies certain crimes — such as vandalism — as a hate crime that other cities would classify in a different way.”
Reports suggest this active approach, which may include officers logging an observed graffiti epithet as a hate incident sua sponte (on their own initiative) rather than waiting for a public complaint, is being adopted by other cities. Should such methods become more widespread in the future, the FBI count of reported hate incidents is certain to increase. Yet, this upward trend would not, with any certainty, establish a genuine rise in the actual incidence of hate crimes.
The Predisposition to Believe
An inherent human predisposition exists to readily accept findings that appear to underscore the prevalence of significant injustice. This impulse to believe can also affect academic scholarship.
A case in point involves a 2014 study, which has since been retracted, that purported to find that “structural stigma” in society shortened the lives of LGBT persons by a remarkable twelve years. The authors later acknowledged that an inadvertent coding error had occurred in the data analysis. Once the error was corrected, no statistically significant correlation between “structural stigma” and mortality was found. Despite the inherent implausibility of the original conclusion, the paper had already achieved “highly cited paper” status and continued to accumulate citations even following its formal retraction.
