Jonathan Pederson
Katie Frey
Victimology
11 October 2016

Victimization of Immigrants: Hostility Immigrants and Hispanic-Americans Face

The Department of Justice, in partnership with Northeastern University’s School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, prepared a report for the National Institute of Justice entitled Understanding Trends in Hate Crimes Against Immigrants and Hispanic-Americans analyzing the victimization of Immigrants. The intent of the study was to seek a correlation between recent rhetoric and a rise in hate crimes. In order to do so, they separated the study into two phases. The first phase entailed compiling statistics from other studies like the NCVS, NIBRS, and UCR. They narrowed their study into four states they felt were best at collecting data at the state-level. The second phase was to collect surveys from police departments, NGO’s, and other law enforcement officers. The comparison between the two phases produced clear analysis of hate crimes.

The findings suggested that hate crimes didn’t necessarily grow since prior studies, but rather the details of the study show intriguing results. The report admitted that data was difficult to track prior to the passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990. However, the data collected showed similar results on the aggregate level, however certain focal groups experienced a rise in hate crimes. For example, Hispanic children experienced a rise in hate-related bullying since the 1990’s. This shows how impressionable the children are to parental xenophobia or rhetoric displayed on TV. Other results of the study showed an increase of hatred toward Hispanics prior to 2000, but curtailed after the events of 9/11. However, the number of reported hate crimes returned during the mid-2000’s. This shows how the focus of hatred shifted slightly toward Islamic immigrants and the flourishment of Islamophobia. The study also delved into what they called the “Quality of Hate Crimes” or rather the intensity the hate crimes bore. However, they admitted data for this was relatively weak and difficult to match UCR reports with NIBRS reports. A possible cause they provided was that local matters rarely became reported and the more intense the crime was, the more likely it would be a state matter and be reported. This leaves a gap of lower tiered crimes that are either not reported or inaccurately reported.

Works Cited

Shively, Michael, Ph.D, Rajen Subramanian, Ph.D, Omri Drucker, and Jared Edgerton. "Understanding Trends in Hate Crimes Against Immigrants and Hispanic-Americans." National Crime Justice Reference Service (2014): n. pag. Print.