State Police Release 2005 Hate Crimes Report

The Massachusetts State Police in conjunction with the Executive Office of Public Safety and the Commonwealth Fusion Center has released the 2005 Massachusetts Hate Crimes Report  file size 6MB .

Some general observations made by the report were as follows:

• 524 bias (hate) crimes were reported by Massachusetts police agencies in 2005.

• Bias against an individual's race/ethnicity/national origin constituted the largest category of reported motives at 63.4% of the total with bias offenses due to sexual orientation being the second most frequent category at 21.2%.

• Most Massachusetts hate crimes in 2005 were nonviolent in nature, with only 18.1% reported as either an aggravated or simple assault. The most frequently reported bias-related criminal offenses were harassment and threats (34.7%) and damage to property (16.2%).

• The race of the victim of hate crime in Massachusetts was primarily white in 50.6% of cases, with black victims making up 35.3% of cases. The victims were predominantly male (64.8%) with an average age of victims being 31.1 years old.

• The race of bias crime offenders were white (57.3%) with black offenders at 35.4%.
• A majority of perpetrators were male (83.3%) with an average age of 28.4 years old.
• The most crime-prone age group for bias offenders was the 16 - 20 year old cohort almost twice the number of any other age group with 28.2% of the incidents.

• There is no clear pattern of incident locations in this data.
• 16.1% of the incidents were reported at a school or college according to police.

The 2005 Hate Crimes Report data is compiled by the State Police Crime Reporting Unit at the Commonwealth Fusion Center and is attached in its entirety to this news release. The 2005 Hate Crimes Report may be viewed at the State Police website at www.mass.gov/msp.

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www.mass.gov/msp

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