Showing posts with label exit polling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label exit polling. Show all posts

Monday, November 21, 2016

Hate crime statistics for 2015

Most people don't follow crime statistics, and probably not hate crime statistics, but I do. The law that hate crimes had to be collected and analyzed is 26 years old, signed by GHW Bush with a Democrat Congress in 1990. It's been revised twice, and most recently in 2009 to add more categories for sexual orientation. Race/ethnicity and religion are the majority. Hate crimes are a small niche in crime given the attention it gets on TV--5,850 crimes of all types from assault to murder--person, business, institution, or society as a whole. And now there are 3 categories for sex: gender, gender identity and sexual orientation--that should goose the numbers a little. It must be tough to mark the box for a bi-sexual Muslim who assaults a transgender woman who is a lesbian Jew. Since we already have laws against all these crimes I've never understood a special hate motivation law. Only one rape (legacy definition) in the 2015 report was counted as a hate crime compared to 255 larcenies. https://ucr.fbi.gov/hate-crime/2015/topic-pages/victims_final

It's unclear to me if the San Bernardino murders of Dec. 2015 by Muslims were ever called a hate crime even though 14 people died and 22 were injured, 3 of them immigrants, and many Christians participating in a quasi-religious holiday party. Even though the FBI said the shooters were inspired by jihad and terrorist ideas, it wasn't a hate crime?

San Bernardino did however, inspire Donald Trump to say all immigration from Muslim countries should end until the U.S. had a better way to vet them. For this he was condemned--by Obama, Gov. Brown, the Pentagon, and most global leaders. When polled right before the election about 57.4% of American voters agreed with Trump on immigration, including 58.5% of Hispanic voters. (Zogby)

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/17/us/san-bernardino-attackers-discussed-jihad-in-private-messages-fbi-says.html?_r=0

Southern Poverty Law Center, which I consider a hate group, blames Pamela Geller for San Bernardino terrorists. https://www.jihadwatch.org/2016/03/southern-poverty-law-center-blames-san-bernardino-jihad-massacre-on-pamela-geller