Only 15% of NYC Hate Crime Charges End in Conviction
Among the city’s five district attorneys, the conviction rate ranged from a high of 23 percent in Manhattan to just 1 percent in the Bronx.
Landwebs
Consequences for being charged with a hate crime in New York can vary considerably, with pronounced differences between boroughs, and while data obtained from the state Division of Criminal Justice Services shows that of the 569 hate crime arrests between 2015 and 2020, only 87 cases (15 percent of hate crime arrests) resulted in a hate crime conviction, reports The City. Among the city’s five district attorneys, this rate ranged from a high of 23 percent in Manhattan to just 1 percent in the Bronx, where just a single hate crime arrest out of a total of 92 resulted in a hate crime conviction since District Attorney Darcel Clark took control of the office in 2016.
In Brooklyn, 30 out of 173 hate crime arrests led to hate crime convictions between 2015 and 2020, while the number was 15 out of 110 in Queens and 3 out of 30 in Staten Island. Hate crime experts and prosecutors say the numbers highlight a gap between the rhetoric of politicians on punishing hate crimes and the difficulty of proving the motivation behind an act — which is necessary to obtain a conviction. More than 60 crimes fall under the hate crime statute in New York, from simple menacing to possession of a biological weapon. The state data shows that the more serious felony arrests for hate crimes yielded felony convictions — whether as a hate crime or not — in 19 percent of the cases closed citywide between 2015 and 2020. A recent report by Stanford Law School and NYU’s Brennan Center for Justice noted that the current approach relies too heavily on law enforcement.
