Hate Crime Laws in States Called Weak, Ineffective
A new report from the Movement Advancement Project, and backed by more than a dozen other national advocacy organizations, has found that hate crime laws across the nation are inconsistent and incomplete when it comes to addressing bias-motivated crimes.
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A new report from the Movement Advancement Project, and backed by more than a dozen other national advocacy organizations, has found that hate crime laws across the nation are inconsistent and incomplete when it comes to addressing bias-motivated crimes, reports Channel 3000. Wisconsin, for example, is one of about half of all states that don’t require hate-crime reporting by law enforcement, as well as one of about two-thirds nationwide that doesn’t legally require officer hate-crime training. Hate crime is usually treated as a penalty enhancer, there’s often a separate property damage statute, and about half of all states require law enforcement agencies to report their hate crime data.
But when it comes to the specific combinations of laws, the types of categories each law protects, and what kind of training or reporting is or isn’t required–the result is a mosaic of inconsistency. The report also honed in on solution-oriented and victim-protection laws, of which there were few nationwide. Only nine states, not including Wisconsin, had laws protecting hate-crime victims and survivors. Wisconsin was one of just five states that had a restorative justice sentencing element for hate crimes, although it only applies to juveniles. Wisconsin does not have a law requiring law enforcement to report hate crimes, with hundreds of law enforcement agencies failing to report a hate crime in years and has no legal requirement for relevant training.
