ABSTRACT
Hate crimes are acts that are already defined as crimes but in addition are motivated by bias against an individual or group due to protected characteristics such as race, gender, national origin, color, and sexual orientation. One of the difficulties in determining whether a hate crime has occurred is that perpetrators of such crimes are not generally open about hating and/or selecting victims because they are part of targeted groups. The Hate Crimes Statistics Act mandates that the federal government collect statistical information about crimes that occur due to a victim's race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Many people consider hate crimes objectively worse than "ordinary" crimes because such crimes often send a message to other members of the victim's group regardless of whether the perpetrator intended to send such a message.
