The collecting and publishing of national statistics on hate crimes by the U.S. Justice Department will not put a stop to them, but it “will result in a greater awareness and understanding of the true dimensions of the problem nationwide,” FBI Director William Sessions said last week.
He said minority groups should not look at the collection of hate crimes statistics as a “panacea” for such crimes, “which can divide a community and terrorize individuals.”
The FBI began collecting hate crime statistics Jan. 1, following the signing by President Bush last April of the Hate Crime Statistics Act.
The law requires the Justice Department to gather information on crimes based on prejudice against race, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation. The FBI will publish the statistics as part of its annual Uniform Crime Reports.
Sessions spoke last Thursday at a news conference at FBI headquarters, attended by representatives of state and local police departments, and community and civil rights groups, including the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith and the American Jewish Committee.
Sessions noted that the news conference was being held on the 23rd anniversary of the assassination of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., which he said demonstrated how a hate crime can “affect an entire nation.”
He said today there is a “growing concern that hate-related violence has increased.” He conceded that this may be due to better reporting of such crimes in recent years, but said that with the gathering of statistics, the “full nature and full scope” of the problem can be learned.
Sessions said the success of the program will depend on law enforcement agencies throughout the country. He said the FBI has already conducted regional training programs that have included representatives from all 50 states.
126 HATE CRIMES CONVICTIONS
The FBI has also published a training guide on collecting the data, which was developed with ADL’s assistance.
“We all know that prejudice and bigotry cannot be legislated, regulated or tabulated out of existence,” Burton Levinson, ADL’s honorary chairman, said at the news conference.
He praised the FBI for using the new law “not just as an administrative responsibility, but rather as an important tool to confront violent bigotry.”
Sessions said that combating bigotry is not only up to law enforcement agencies. “I urge each and every citizen, whether civilian or sworn law enforcement (officer), whether in the private or public sector, to become more active in combatting crimes spawned by bigotry and by hatred,” he said.
The statistics law followed a law adopted in 1988 that imposes federal criminal penalties for hate crimes against individuals or religious property and cemeteries.
James Turner, assistant attorney general in the Justice Department’s civil rights division, said last Thursday that during the last three years, the department has indicted 139 defendants in 26 states for hate crimes. Of these, 126 have been convicted, a 91 percent conviction rate.
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