Crime is all over. There is not a single place where an act of crime is not reported. This may range from crimes of murder, burglary, arson, rape, larceny, and hate crime among others. This essay will talk about the Federal Bureau of Investigations’ Uniform Crime Report on hate crime.
A hate crime is a kind of preconception and favoritism that comes about due to differences in culture, religion, age, disability and sexuality. The paper is going to compare data from two metropolitan areas; New York and Los Angeles, while looking at the city which had the highest number of incidents reported as well as the rates of crime for each area. The paper will continue discussing the changes over time and also explain the factors that might have led to the differences in rates.
New York and Los Angeles are two of the biggest metropolises in the United States. In 2008, the populations of New York and Los Angeles were approximated to be 8,363,710 and 9,862,049 respectively. The two metropolitan areas are occupied by people of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. Additionally, material possessions and resources are not evenly distributed within the cities. While some parts are endowed with riches, others are poverty-stricken and this has led to the various types of crimes encountered regularly in the metropolitan areas including hate crime (City Population, 2009).
In 2007, law enforcement agencies all around Los Angeles took part in analyzing and reporting hate crimes. In the beginning, the reports were based upon a sample population size of 36,553,215 and out of 727 agencies, only 276 presented the reported information to the Uniform Crime Report program of the FBI, leaving the initial hate crime statistics misapprehended. Law-breakings are classified and broken down into prejudiced motives by every hate crime paper.
According to the report, 674 people were ill-used on account of their race, 204 because of their culture and religion, 263 on their sexuality, 253 based on their ethnic background, and three on their disablement (Hate Crime Statistics, 2010).
During the same year, a total of 273 law enforcement agencies in New York participated in the analysis and reporting of hate crimes to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Report program. The information was grounded upon a population sample of 15,335,617 but a sum of 493 occurrences of hate crimes was exposed owing to just a few agencies presenting their information findings on hate crime.
In the same manner, like those of Los Angeles, the hate crimes were broken down in the report according to prejudice motive. Those discriminated due to their race were 126, cultural and religious backgrounds involved 271 individuals, 73 based on their sexuality, 22 because of their ethnic affiliation, and one for impairment (Hate Crime Statistics, 2010).
As observed, Los Angeles had higher rates of hate crime as compared to New York and this could have been due to a number of reasons. To begin with, the number of enforcement agencies that took part in the analysis and presentation of hate crime reports to the UCR program for review was higher in Los Angeles than in New York. Furthermore, information was collected from a larger population size in Los Angeles as compared to New York which sampled a rather small population.
Therefore, the painted statistical information could be inaccurate owing to the differences in the number of participating agencies and the population samples (New FBI Hate Crime Statistics Confirm Need for Stronger Federal Response, 2008).
During the year 2002, the hate crime reports in Los Angeles indicated a gradually decreasing number. Between 2004 and 2005, a slight decrease of 0.9% in the number of hate crime incidences was registered. Although these rates of change are very small, several studies have shown that hate crimes are neither decreasing nor increasing as a little increase was recorded in 2007. Contrastingly, New York has recorded an upward trend with hate crime incidences. According to the FBI’s 2007 statistics, 595 occurrences of racial hate crimes were reported which accounts to an increase of 3.3% from 2006 reports (New FBI Hate Crime Statistics Confirm Need for Stronger Federal Response, 2008).
In conclusion, a careful review of this hate crime research and the comparison of the two metropolitan areas are subject to inaccuracy. This is because of the differences and inaccuracy in the reports submitted, determinants of a hate crime, number of incidents of hate crime as well as their rates. In addition, there are a number of hate crime incidents that are not recorded by law enforcement hence the statistics published may not be a true reflection of the actual happenings.
Therefore, this should not be regarded an adequate way of providing the research workers and the community with offense statistical measures. For the hate crime to be addressed in an effective manner, the United States government need to target the law enforcement agencies that have not participated in hate crime reporting so as to increase the number and accuracy of data collected.
References
City Population. (2009). Web.
Hate Crime Statistics. (2010). Web.
New FBI Hate Crime Statistics Confirm Need for Stronger Federal Response. (2008). Web.