Comparing Different Sources of Data to Examine Trends of Hate Crime in Absence of Official Registers
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Comparing Different Sources of Data to Examine Trends of Hate Crime in Absence of Official Registers Matteo Vergani 1 & Carolina Navarro 1 & Joshua D. Freilich 2 & Steven M. Chermak 3 Received: 8 June 2020 / Accepted: 27 August 2020/ # Southern Criminal Justice Association 2020
Abstract Whether hate crime against minority groups increases or decreases over time underpins important theoretical and policy questions. However, the ability to capture trends is limited due to a dearth of data and measurement problems, especially in countries where there is no official register of hate crime. Using Chile as a case study, we compare longitudinal data from victimization surveys, registers of community organizations and mainstream media reports. The results allow us to discuss opportunities and limitations of triangulating different data sources to capture trends of hate crime. Our study results show a general increase in trends of hate crimes in Chile between 2015 and 2019, but important differences between data sources and victim groups (we consider LGBTI, migrant and Indigenous victims). We propose that the qualitative difference in the size of variation across different sources is explained by different biases of the data, which we review. This article illustrates the importance of disaggregating hate crimes because trends, correlates and key predictors often differ depending on the type of hate crime and the source of data. Keywords Hate crime . Hate incidents . Hate measurement . Chile
Introduction This study focuses on measuring hate crimes in Chile and investigates the strengths and weaknesses of various sources that track these crimes. Hate crime is generally defined
* Matteo Vergani [email protected]
1
Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University, Melbourne Burwood Campus, 221 Burwood Highway, Burwood, VIC 3125, Australia
2
John Jay College of Criminal Justice, City University of New York, New York City, NY, USA
3
School of Criminal Justice, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, USA
American Journal of Criminal Justice
as any crime that manifests evidence of prejudice motivation (Green, McFalls, & Smith, 2001). Hate crime against minority groups has been the subject of increasing public attention at the global level, especially in the aftermath of violent episodes such as mass shootings of religious, ethnic and racial minorities (Moses, 2019). Official reports show that the number of hate crimes has been increasing in the last decade (see, for example, US Department of Justice, 2019; Home Office, 2018). Hate crimes have a significant negative impact on both victims and the broader society: they are likely to be more violent than regular crimes, and to create a fear in the targeted group that undermines community social cohesiveness (Chermak, Freilich, Parkin, & Lynch, 2012; Freilich & Chermak, 2013). In countries where there is no official recording of hate crimes, anecdotal evidence suggests that they are severe and brutal, and that they have been incre
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