For the 'offender' charts, it'd be interesting to compare those numbers to a chart showing the total population.

I wasn't going to chime in on the original comment thread, because it got too heated and pesky things like "facts" were getting thrown off the bus. But there's two one things that could be far more useful that is missing. What is the relation between income and hate crimes? Or education level? I'd strongly suspect that there's far more of a link between low income and higher hate crimes than there is with race or even gender. It just so happens that blacks have lower average incomes than whites.

@Stu, those are very good points. One of the problems with this data is it's based on what victims and witnesses can ascertain just by looking at someone. It would be very interesting to do a study of convicted hate crime offenders and compare their income and education.

@stu - That's a good point, and one I didn' think of - but wouldn't it also be true for most crimes? Income level is probably the strongest predictor of criminal activity in general.

@Reymont, while I would agree that income level can be a factor in certain types crimes, I wouldn't say that it's a strong indicator of crime in general.

In fact, I would say it's much more likely that poor people usually can't afford the kind of legal (or otherwise) defense that middle or upper income folks can obtain.

Sometimes I think that showing statistics broken down into race and gender about the issues that divide races and genders have an inherent problem. Is using these statistics reinforcing the distances between the genders and races? I'm not trying to be obtuse, or accusatory, I'm asking a real question: I'm just looking at this and wondering what good it's doing? Feel free to (kindly) point out how these stats may help. Interesting yes, practical...how?

Does this include crimes (even uncharged) by say, police officers against ethnic or minority members? I was thinking about the relatively kidnapping/false arrest lawsuit or brutality cases where race appears to be a factor and wondering how those get tracked? (See http://www.civiljusticecenter.com/Articles… )

@El Stunto,
I think that's a good point, but breakdowns by gender and race are relevant because they help us see if disparities exist along those lines. So in this case, we can see that women are disproportionately victims of hate crimes and white men are disproportionately offenders. That aids our understanding of who is at risk for committing or being the victim of a hate crime in our state and could contribute to further prevention and education.

@ Reymont - I think that your vision of "criminal activity" might be a bit off. Driving while intoxicated is criminal activity and people who both own a car and have disposable income to go out drinking in bars are disproportionately wealthy and white. So-called "white collar crime" is criminal activity and is mostly committed by wealthy white males.

I wouldn't be surprised at all to learn that a great number of hate crime offenders are members of the "middle class" or at least grew up in "middle class" homes. Walk past some of the bars in Old Town on a Friday night and you'll see a parade of likely offenders.