The Community Relations Service (CRS), an arm of the U.S. Department of Justice, is a specialized Federal conciliation service available to State and local officials to help resolve and prevent racial and ethnic conflict, violence and civil disorders. When governors, mayors, police chiefs, and school superintendents need help to defuse racial crises, they can turn to CRS.
Federal and state laws on Hate crime
1. The Civil Rights Act of 1964 which permits federal prosecution of anyone who "willingly injures, intimidates or interferes with another person, or attempts to do so, by force because of the other person's race, color, religion or national origin”. Persons violating this law face a fine or imprisonment of up to one year, or both. If bodily injury results or if such acts of intimidation involve the use of firearms, explosives or fire, individuals can receive prison terms of up to 10 years, while crimes involving kidnapping, sexual assault, or murder can be punishable by life in prison or the death penalty.
2. The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act, requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or gender of any person
3. Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009 which expanded existing United States federal hate crime law to apply to crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability.
4. 45 states and the District of Columbia have statutes criminalizing various types of bias-motivated violence or intimidation (the exceptions are Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina, and Wyoming)
5. The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 requires the Attorney General to collect data on crimes committed because of the victim's race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Since 1992, the Department of Justice and the FBI have jointly published an annual report on hate crime statistics.
6. The Campus Hate Crimes Right to Know Act of 1997 which requires campus security authorities to collect and report data on hate crimes committed on the basis of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or disability
Understanding perpetrators
Psychologist Edward Dunbar, who has done several clinical and forensic researches on hate crimes at University of California, Los Angeles with help of Los Angeles Police Department. As per Dunbar’s finding, those who commit hate crimes are not mentally ill in the traditional sense, they're not diagnosably schizophrenic or manic depressive, but they presents with high level of aggression and antisocial behavior. These people are not psychotic, but they're consistently very troubled, very disturbed, very problematic members of our community who pose a huge risk for future violence. These offenders also show high levels of parental or caretaker abuse and use of violence to solve family problems.
Hate-Motivated Incidents
An act that involves prejudice and bias of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, or disability but does not amount to a crime is described as a “hate-motivated incident”. The term describes acts motivated by prejudice ranging from those that are merely offensive to those constituting criminal acts in which the crime has not been proven. Thus, they share the second but not the first element of a hate crime.
Hate Speech
Forms of expression that are motivated by, demonstrate or encourage hostility towards a group — or a person because of their membership of that group