Hate Crimes in Hawaii, 2002.pdfVIP

Criminal Justice Data Brief Mark J. Bennett, Attorney General Lari Koga, Administrator Richard T. Bissen, Jr., First Deputy Attorney General April 2003 Hate Crimes in Hawaii, 2002 Prepared by The Research Statistics Branch Hawaii Revised Statutes §846-51 through -54 require the Department of the Attorney General to develop, direct, and report annually on a statewide hate crime statistics reporting program. With input and assistance from Hawaii’s police departments and prosecutors, the program was developed dur- ing the fall of 2001 and officially launched on January 1, 2002. This report is the first annual pub- lication and covers Calendar Year 2002. Definition and Background In Hawaii, the term “hate crime” is legally de- fined as, “…any criminal act in which the perpetrator intentionally selected a victim, or in the case of a property crime, the property that was the object of a crime, because of hostility toward the actual or perceived race, religion, disability, ethnic- ity, national origin, or sexual orientation of any person” (HRS §846-51). This definition is similar to many others adopted throughout the country, in- cluding at the federal level. It is important to note that hate crimes are not “new” types of offenses, but rather are traditional offenses (e.g., assault, vandalism) for which an offender’s motivation is based upon a bias against one or more of the protected groups. However, they differ from most traditional offenses in the fre- quently complicated and inherently subjective process of determining whether or not a hate crime has, in fact, occurred. While several heinous and highly publicized hate crimes occurring nationally in recent years offer clear cut examples, far more common are thousands of comparatively low level offenses that