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Hate Crimes against Asian Americans

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Abstract

Using 1992–2014 data from the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), the present study examines the nature and characteristics of hate crimes against Asian Americans by comparing them with those of hate crimes against African Americans and Hispanics. Minority-general and minority-specific models are proposed to guide the analysis. The findings are mixed. The analyses of all victim-related and most offender-related variables show similarities of hate crimes against Asian Americans to those against African Americans and Hispanics. These findings provide support for the minority-general model. Offenders’ race and all incident-related variables of hate crimes against Asian Americans, however, differ significantly from those of hate crimes against African Americans and Hispanics. These significant differences provide support for the minority-specific model.

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Notes

  1. Bureau of Justice Statistics, National Crime Victimization Survey, 2015, 2018 Public-Use File.

  2. https://www1.nyc.gov/site/nypd/stats/reports-analysis/crime-enf.page

  3. The rate is calculated based on data from the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics, 2013, to 2018 reports (U.S. Department of Justice, 2017).

  4. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/anti-asian-american-hate-incidents-up-racism/

  5. There are a few case studies of hate crimes against Asian Americans and Asian responses to hate crimes against them (e.g., Hall & Hwang, 2001; Lee, Vue, Seklecki, & Ma, 2007). In addition, a few studies mentioned hate crimes against Asian Americans as part of their analysis of hate crimes in general (e.g. Levin & Amster, 2007).

  6. Hispanic immigrants may experience similar barriers. As indicated in the same survey, Latinos were the second racial-ethnic group that were most likely to underreport (42%) (Davis & Erez, 1998).

  7. A few studies have compared the nature and characteristics of hate crime and conventional offenses (e.g., Klein & Allison, 2018; Messner et al., 2004; Stacey, 2015).

  8. OJJDP Statistical Briefing Book. Online. Available: https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/offenders/qa03401.asp?qaDate=2016. Released on October 22, 2018.

  9. The original coding schemes in the NIBRS recording book, which correspond to the measures of the variables used here can be obtained upon request

  10. Hate crimes occurred in residence/home may include residence-related incidents such as destruction, damage, vandalism or arson of home property.

  11. The higher likelihood in the early years may be due to the change of the racial categories in the FBI’s UCR hate crime dataset. Starting from 2013, the racial category of ‘Asian or Other Pacific Islander’ was expanded to two separated categories of ‘Asian’ and ‘Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander’.

  12. We also conducted a multi-level analysis using police agencies as the level-2 units of analysis. The results indicate that the random effects of police agencies are insignificant (τ(Black) = .77, df = 2622, χ2 = 2243, p > .50; τ(Hispanic) = 1.06, df = 2622, χ2 = 1961, p > .50), which suggest that the variations of reporting and recording processes across police agencies are not likely to have significant impact on the findings.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology, College of Criminal Justice, Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX, USA

    Yan Zhang

  2. Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, Saint Francis University, Loretto, PA, USA

    Lening Zhang

  3. Executive Services, Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Huntsville, TX, USA

    Francis Benton

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  1. Yan Zhang
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  2. Lening Zhang
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Zhang, Y., Zhang, L. & Benton, F. Hate Crimes against Asian Americans. Am J Crim Just 47, 441–461 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103-020-09602-9

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