Police and the Production of Hate Crimes: Continuity and Change in One Jurisdiction

Abstract

Several recent studies have explored the characteristics of hate crimes reported to and verified by the police and the social construction of bias motivation. This article expands on those studies by identifying continuities and trends in the production of hate crimes in one jurisdiction, Baltimore County, Maryland. It explores the effects of changes in departmental policies and in county demographics on the increased number and stable distribution of types of bias in reported hate crimes from 1987 through 1996, and it probes ambiguities that continue to affect hate crime statistics in Baltimore County. Because the same issues are likely to be found in the hate crime statistics produced in other jurisdictions and the aggregate hate crime data produced by the FBI, this case study should be instructive for police policy makers in other jurisdictions.

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