Hate crimes are criminal actions intended to harm or intimidate people because of their race, ethnicity sexual orientation, religion or other minority group status. Hate crimes are also referred to as bias crimes.

The problem of hate crimes has attracted increasing research attention since the 1980's. This is especially true for criminologists and law enforcement personnel who focus on documenting the prevalence of the problem and formulating responses to it. In researching hate crimes I found some very interesting statistics that I did not know about:

• Ordinary crimes are generally committed by people that are familiar with the victims.
• Hate crimes are committed by strangers, and most perpetrators are under the age of 20.
• As of September of 2001 there were 7 states that did not have hate crime laws.
A. Arkansas, Hawaii, Indiana, Kansas, New Mexico, S. Carolina and Wyoming.
• 20 states have laws that don't include sexual orientation as a protected group
• On......

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Title: Hate Crimes
Approximate Word Count: 684
Approximate Pages: 3 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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