Hate Crimes in NY from 2010-2016
Jennifer Johnson
23/06/2020
Hate Crimes Dataset from Prof. Rachel Saidi
This dataset looks at all types of hate crimes in New York counties by the type of hate crime from 2010 to 2016.
A caveat:
Flawed hate crime data collection - we should know how the data was collected (Nathan Yau of Flowing Data, Dec 5, 2017)
Data can provide you with important information, but when the collection process is flawed, there’s not much you can do. Ken Schwencke, reporting for ProPublica, researched the tiered system that the FBI relies on to gather hate crime data for the United States:
“Under a federal law passed in 1990, the FBI is required to track and tabulate crimes in which there was ‘manifest evidence of prejudice’ against a host of protected groups, regardless of differences in how state laws define who’s protected. The FBI, in turn, relies on local law enforcement agencies to collect and submit this data, but can’t compel them to do so.”
This is a link to the ProPublica Article: https://www.propublica.org/article/why-america-fails-at-gathering-hate-crime-statistics
Here is a data visualization of where hate crimes do NOT get reported around the country (Ken Schwencke, 2017): https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/hatecrime-map
So now we know that there is possible bias in the dataset, what can we do with it?
library(tidyverse)## -- Attaching packages --------------------------------------- tidyverse 1.3.0 --## v ggplot2 3.3.1 v purrr 0.3.4
## v tibble 3.0.1 v dplyr 1.0.0
## v tidyr 1.1.0 v stringr 1.4.0
## v readr 1.3.1 v forcats 0.5.0## -- Conflicts ------------------------------------------ tidyverse_conflicts() --
## x dplyr::filter() masks stats::filter()
## x dplyr::lag() masks stats::lag()setwd("C:/Users/Valued Customer/Desktop/Lovebug/Montgomery College/DATA 110/Week 3")
hatecrimes <- read_csv("hateCrimes2010.csv")## Parsed with column specification:
## cols(
## .default = col_double(),
## County = col_character(),
## `Crime Type` = col_character()
## )## See spec(...) for full column specifications.## See spec(...) for full column specifications.Cleaning up the data:
Making all headers lowercase and remove spaces
After cleaning up the variable names, look at the structure of the data. Since there are 44 variables considered in this dataset, you can use “summary” to decide which hate crimes to focus on. In the output of “summary”, look at the min/max values. Some have a max-vale of 1.
names(hatecrimes) <- tolower(names(hatecrimes))
names(hatecrimes) <- gsub(" ","",names(hatecrimes))
str(hatecrimes)## tibble [423 x 44] (S3: spec_tbl_df/tbl_df/tbl/data.frame)
## $ county : chr [1:423] "Albany" "Albany" "Allegany" "Bronx" ...
## $ year : num [1:423] 2016 2016 2016 2016 2016 ...
## $ crimetype : chr [1:423] "Crimes Against Persons" "Property Crimes" "Property Crimes" "Crimes Against Persons" ...
## $ anti-male : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-female : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-transgender : num [1:423] 0 0 0 4 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-genderidentityexpression : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-age* : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-white : num [1:423] 0 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-black : num [1:423] 1 2 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 2 ...
## $ anti-americanindian/alaskannative : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-asian : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-nativehawaiian/pacificislander : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-multi-racialgroups : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-otherrace : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-jewish : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-catholic : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-protestant : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-islamic(muslim) : num [1:423] 1 0 0 6 0 0 0 0 1 0 ...
## $ anti-multi-religiousgroups : num [1:423] 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-atheism/agnosticism : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-religiouspracticegenerally : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-otherreligion : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-buddhist : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-easternorthodox(greek,russian,etc.): num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-hindu : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-jehovahswitness : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-mormon : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-otherchristian : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-sikh : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-hispanic : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-arab : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-otherethnicity/nationalorigin : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-non-hispanic* : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-gaymale : num [1:423] 1 0 0 8 0 1 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-gayfemale : num [1:423] 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-gay(maleandfemale) : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-heterosexual : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-bisexual : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-physicaldisability : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ anti-mentaldisability : num [1:423] 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ...
## $ totalincidents : num [1:423] 3 3 1 20 2 3 1 1 1 2 ...
## $ totalvictims : num [1:423] 4 3 1 20 2 3 1 1 1 2 ...
## $ totaloffenders : num [1:423] 3 3 1 25 2 3 1 1 1 2 ...
## - attr(*, "spec")=
## .. cols(
## .. County = col_character(),
## .. Year = col_double(),
## .. `Crime Type` = col_character(),
## .. `Anti-Male` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Female` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Transgender` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Gender Identity Expression` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Age*` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-White` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Black` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Asian` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Multi-Racial Groups` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Other Race` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Jewish` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Catholic` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Protestant` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Islamic (Muslim)` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Multi-Religious Groups` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Atheism/Agnosticism` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Religious Practice Generally` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Other Religion` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Buddhist` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Eastern Orthodox (Greek, Russian, etc.)` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Hindu` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Jehovahs Witness` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Mormon` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Other Christian` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Sikh` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Hispanic` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Arab` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Other Ethnicity/National Origin` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Non-Hispanic*` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Gay Male` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Gay Female` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Gay (Male and Female)` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Heterosexual` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Bisexual` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Physical Disability` = col_double(),
## .. `Anti-Mental Disability` = col_double(),
## .. `Total Incidents` = col_double(),
## .. `Total Victims` = col_double(),
## .. `Total Offenders` = col_double()
## .. )#summary(hatecrimes)Selecting only certain hate-crimes
Rsaidi decided to only look at the hate-crime types with a max number or 9 or more. That way the focus is on the most prominent types of hate-crimes.
hatecrimes2 <- hatecrimes %>%
select(county, year, `anti-black`, 'anti-white', `anti-jewish`, 'anti-catholic','anti-age*','anti-islamic(muslim)', 'anti-gaymale', 'anti-hispanic') %>%
group_by(county, year)
head(hatecrimes2)## # A tibble: 6 x 10
## # Groups: county, year [4]
## county year `anti-black` `anti-white` `anti-jewish` `anti-catholic`
## <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Albany 2016 1 0 0 0
## 2 Albany 2016 2 0 0 0
## 3 Alleg~ 2016 1 0 0 0
## 4 Bronx 2016 0 1 0 0
## 5 Bronx 2016 0 1 1 0
## 6 Broome 2016 1 0 0 0
## # ... with 4 more variables: `anti-age*` <dbl>, `anti-islamic(muslim)` <dbl>,
## # `anti-gaymale` <dbl>, `anti-hispanic` <dbl>Checking the dimensions and the summary to make sure no missing values
Also check the dimensions to count how many variables remain.
dim(hatecrimes2)## [1] 423 10# There are currently 13 variables with 423 rows.
summary(hatecrimes2)## county year anti-black anti-white
## Length:423 Min. :2010 Min. : 0.000 Min. : 0.0000
## Class :character 1st Qu.:2011 1st Qu.: 0.000 1st Qu.: 0.0000
## Mode :character Median :2013 Median : 1.000 Median : 0.0000
## Mean :2013 Mean : 1.761 Mean : 0.3357
## 3rd Qu.:2015 3rd Qu.: 2.000 3rd Qu.: 0.0000
## Max. :2016 Max. :18.000 Max. :11.0000
## anti-jewish anti-catholic anti-age* anti-islamic(muslim)
## Min. : 0.000 Min. : 0.0000 Min. :0.00000 Min. : 0.0000
## 1st Qu.: 0.000 1st Qu.: 0.0000 1st Qu.:0.00000 1st Qu.: 0.0000
## Median : 0.000 Median : 0.0000 Median :0.00000 Median : 0.0000
## Mean : 3.981 Mean : 0.2695 Mean :0.05201 Mean : 0.4704
## 3rd Qu.: 3.000 3rd Qu.: 0.0000 3rd Qu.:0.00000 3rd Qu.: 0.0000
## Max. :82.000 Max. :12.0000 Max. :9.00000 Max. :10.0000
## anti-gaymale anti-hispanic
## Min. : 0.000 Min. : 0.0000
## 1st Qu.: 0.000 1st Qu.: 0.0000
## Median : 0.000 Median : 0.0000
## Mean : 1.499 Mean : 0.3735
## 3rd Qu.: 1.000 3rd Qu.: 0.0000
## Max. :36.000 Max. :17.0000Using Facet_Wrap
Look at each set of hate-crimes for each type for each year. Use the package “tidyr” to convert the dataset from wide to long with the command “gather”. It will take each column’s hate-crime type combine them all into one column called “id”. Then each cell count will go into the new column, “crimecount”. Finally, we are only doing this for the quantitiative variables, which are in columns 3 - 10. Note the command facet_wrap requires (~) before “id”.
# install.packages("reshape2")
library(reshape2)##
## Attaching package: 'reshape2'## The following object is masked from 'package:tidyr':
##
## smithshatecrimeslong <- hatecrimes2 %>%
tidyr::gather("id", "crimecount", 3:10)
hatecrimesplot <-hatecrimeslong %>%
ggplot(., aes(year, crimecount))+
geom_point()+
aes(color = id)+
facet_wrap(~id)
hatecrimesplot
Looking deeper into crimes against blacks, gay males, and jews
From the facet_wrap plot above, anti-black, anti-gay males, and anti-jewish categories seem to have highest rates of offenses reported. Filter out just for those 3 crimes.
hatenew <- hatecrimeslong %>%
filter( id== "anti-black" | id == "anti-jewish" | id == "anti-gaymale")%>%
group_by(year, county) %>%
arrange(desc(crimecount))
hatenew## # A tibble: 1,269 x 4
## # Groups: year, county [277]
## county year id crimecount
## <chr> <dbl> <chr> <dbl>
## 1 Kings 2012 anti-jewish 82
## 2 Kings 2016 anti-jewish 51
## 3 Suffolk 2014 anti-jewish 48
## 4 Suffolk 2012 anti-jewish 48
## 5 Kings 2011 anti-jewish 44
## 6 Kings 2013 anti-jewish 41
## 7 Kings 2010 anti-jewish 39
## 8 Nassau 2011 anti-jewish 38
## 9 Suffolk 2013 anti-jewish 37
## 10 Nassau 2016 anti-jewish 36
## # ... with 1,259 more rowsPlot these three types of hate crimes together
Use the following commands to finalize your barplot: - position = “dodge” makes side-by-side bars, rather than stacked bars - stat = “identity” allows you to plot each set of bars for each year between 2010 and 2016 - ggtitle gives the plot a title - labs gives a title to the legend
plot2 <- hatenew %>%
ggplot() +
geom_bar(aes(x=year, y=crimecount, fill = id),
position = "dodge", stat = "identity") +
ggtitle("Hate Crime Type in NY Counties Between 2010-2016") +
ylab("Number of Hate Crime Incidents") +
labs(fill = "Hate Crime Type")
plot2
plot2a <- hatenew %>%
ggplot() +
geom_bar(aes(x=year, y=crimecount, fill = id),
position = "dodge", stat = "identity") +
ggtitle("Hate Crime Type in NY Counties Between 2010-2016") +
ylab("Number of Hate Crime Incidents") +
labs(fill = "Hate Crime Type")+
scale_fill_brewer()
plot2a
plot2b <- hatenew %>%
ggplot() +
geom_bar(aes(x=year, y=crimecount, fill = id),
position = "dodge", stat = "identity") +
ggtitle("Hate Crime Type in NY Counties Between 2010-2016") +
ylab("Number of Hate Crime Incidents") +
labs(fill = "Hate Crime Type")+
scale_fill_brewer(palette="Spectral")
plot2b
plot2c <- hatenew %>%
ggplot() +
geom_bar(aes(x=year, y=crimecount, fill = id),
position = "dodge", stat = "identity") +
ggtitle("Hate Crime Type in NY Counties Between 2010-2016") +
ylab("Number of Hate Crime Incidents") +
labs(fill = "Hate Crime Type")+
scale_fill_manual(values=c("#CC6666", "#9999CC", "#66CC99"))
plot2c
We can see that hate crimes against jews spiked in 2012. All other years were relatively consistent with a slight upward trend. There was also an upward trend in hate crimes against gay males. Finally, there appears to be a downward trend in hate crimes against blacks during this period.
What about the counties?
RSaidi had not dealt with the counties, but they are the next place to explore. Below is a bar graphs by county instead of by year.
plot3 <- hatenew %>%
ggplot() +
geom_bar(aes(x=county, y=crimecount, fill = id),
position = "dodge", stat = "identity") +
ggtitle("Hate Crime Type in NY Counties Between 2010-2016") +
ylab("Number of Hate Crime Incidents") +
labs(fill = "Hate Crime Type")
plot3
So many counties
There are too many counties for this plot to make sense, but maybe we can just look at the 5 counties with the highest number of incidents. - use “group_by” to group each row by counties - use summarize to get the total sum of incidents by county - use arrange(desc) to arrange those sums of total incidents by counties in descending order - use top_n to list the 5 counties with highest total incidents
counties <- hatenew %>%
group_by(county, year)%>%
summarize(sum = sum(crimecount)) %>%
arrange(desc(sum)) ## `summarise()` regrouping output by 'county' (override with `.groups` argument)counties## # A tibble: 277 x 3
## # Groups: county [60]
## county year sum
## <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Kings 2012 136
## 2 Kings 2010 110
## 3 Kings 2016 101
## 4 Kings 2013 96
## 5 Kings 2014 94
## 6 Kings 2015 90
## 7 Kings 2011 86
## 8 New York 2016 86
## 9 Suffolk 2012 83
## 10 New York 2013 75
## # ... with 267 more rowsFinally, create the barplot above, but only for the 5 counties in 2012 with the highest incidents of hate-crimes. The command “labs” is nice, because you can get a title, subtitle, y-axis label, and legend title, all in one command.
plot4 <- hatenew %>%
filter(county =="Kings" | county =="New York" | county == "Suffolk" | county == "Nassau" | county == "Queens") %>%
ggplot() +
geom_bar(aes(x=county, y=crimecount, fill = id),
position = "dodge", stat = "identity") +
labs(ylab = "Number of Hate Crime Incidents",
title = "5 Counties in NY with Highest Incidents of Hate Crimes",
subtitle = "Between 2010-2016",
fill = "Hate Crime Type")
plot4
plot4a <- hatenew %>%
filter(county =="Kings" | county =="New York" | county == "Suffolk" | county == "Nassau" | county == "Queens") %>%
ggplot() +
geom_bar(aes(x=county, y=crimecount, fill = id),
position = "dodge", stat = "identity") +
labs(ylab = "Number of Hate Crime Incidents",
title = "5 Counties in NY with Highest Incidents of Hate Crimes",
subtitle = "Between 2010-2016",
fill = "Hate Crime Type")+
scale_fill_manual(values=c("#CC6666", "#9999CC", "#66CC99"))
plot4a
How would calculations be affected by looking at hate crimes in counties per year by population densities?
Bring in census data for populations of New York counties. These are estimates from the 2010 census.
nypop <- read_csv("newyorkpopulation.csv")## Parsed with column specification:
## cols(
## Geography = col_character(),
## `2010` = col_double(),
## `2011` = col_double(),
## `2012` = col_double(),
## `2013` = col_double(),
## `2014` = col_double(),
## `2015` = col_double(),
## `2016` = col_double()
## )Clean the county name to match the other dataset
Rename the variable “Geography” as “county” so that it matches in the other dataset.
nypop$Geography <- gsub(" , New York", "", nypop$Geography)
nypop$Geography <- gsub("County", "", nypop$Geography)
nypoplong <- nypop %>%
rename(county = Geography) %>%
gather("year", "population", 2:8)
nypoplong$year <- as.double(nypoplong$year)
head(nypoplong)## # A tibble: 6 x 3
## county year population
## <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Albany , New York 2010 304078
## 2 Allegany , New York 2010 48949
## 3 Bronx , New York 2010 1388240
## 4 Broome , New York 2010 200469
## 5 Cattaraugus , New York 2010 80249
## 6 Cayuga , New York 2010 79844Focus on 2012
Since 2012 had the highest counts of hate crimes, let’s look at the populations of the counties in 2012.
Clean the nypoplong12 variable, county, so that matches the counties12 variable by Cutting off the “, New York” portion of the county listing
nypoplong12 <- nypoplong %>%
filter(year == 2012) %>%
arrange(desc(population)) %>%
head(10)
nypoplong12$county<-gsub(" , New York","",nypoplong12$county)
nypoplong12## # A tibble: 10 x 3
## county year population
## <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Kings 2012 2572282
## 2 Queens 2012 2278024
## 3 New York 2012 1625121
## 4 Suffolk 2012 1499382
## 5 Bronx 2012 1414774
## 6 Nassau 2012 1350748
## 7 Westchester 2012 961073
## 8 Erie 2012 920792
## 9 Monroe 2012 748947
## 10 Richmond 2012 470978Not surprisingly, 4/5 of the counties with the highest populations also were listed in the counties with the highest number of hate crimes. Only the Bronx, which has the fifth highest population is not in the list with the highest number of total hate crimes over the period from 2010 to 2016.
Recall the total hate crime counts:
Kings: 713
New York: 459
Suffolk: 360
Nassau: 298
Queens: 235
Filter hate crimes just for 2012 as well
counties12 <- counties %>%
filter(year == 2012) %>%
arrange(desc(sum))
counties12## # A tibble: 41 x 3
## # Groups: county [41]
## county year sum
## <chr> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Kings 2012 136
## 2 Suffolk 2012 83
## 3 New York 2012 71
## 4 Nassau 2012 48
## 5 Queens 2012 48
## 6 Erie 2012 28
## 7 Bronx 2012 23
## 8 Richmond 2012 18
## 9 Multiple 2012 14
## 10 Westchester 2012 13
## # ... with 31 more rowsJoin the Hate Crimes data with NY population data for 2012
datajoin <- counties12 %>%
full_join(nypoplong12, by=c("county", "year"))
datajoin## # A tibble: 41 x 4
## # Groups: county [41]
## county year sum population
## <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Kings 2012 136 2572282
## 2 Suffolk 2012 83 1499382
## 3 New York 2012 71 1625121
## 4 Nassau 2012 48 1350748
## 5 Queens 2012 48 2278024
## 6 Erie 2012 28 920792
## 7 Bronx 2012 23 1414774
## 8 Richmond 2012 18 470978
## 9 Multiple 2012 14 NA
## 10 Westchester 2012 13 961073
## # ... with 31 more rowsCalculate the rate of incidents per 100,000. Then arrange in descending order
datajoinrate <- datajoin %>%
mutate(rate = sum/population*100000) %>%
arrange(desc(rate))
datajoinrate## # A tibble: 41 x 5
## # Groups: county [41]
## county year sum population rate
## <chr> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl> <dbl>
## 1 Suffolk 2012 83 1499382 5.54
## 2 Kings 2012 136 2572282 5.29
## 3 New York 2012 71 1625121 4.37
## 4 Richmond 2012 18 470978 3.82
## 5 Nassau 2012 48 1350748 3.55
## 6 Erie 2012 28 920792 3.04
## 7 Queens 2012 48 2278024 2.11
## 8 Bronx 2012 23 1414774 1.63
## 9 Westchester 2012 13 961073 1.35
## 10 Monroe 2012 5 748947 0.668
## # ... with 31 more rowsNotice that the highest rates of hate crimes in 2012 happened in:
dt <- datajoinrate[,c("county","rate")]
dt## # A tibble: 41 x 2
## # Groups: county [41]
## county rate
## <chr> <dbl>
## 1 Suffolk 5.54
## 2 Kings 5.29
## 3 New York 4.37
## 4 Richmond 3.82
## 5 Nassau 3.55
## 6 Erie 3.04
## 7 Queens 2.11
## 8 Bronx 1.63
## 9 Westchester 1.35
## 10 Monroe 0.668
## # ... with 31 more rowsBut the highest poulated counties were: Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, New York, Suffolk (Long Island), Bronx, and Nassau. They do not correspond directly, though they are similar, to the counties with highest rates of hate crimes.
So what does all of this mean?
Important Findings:
I wonder what the data would look like if there was a universally accepted requirement for this type of data collection.
The Bronx appears to have much lower than expected incidents of hate crimes relative to its population density in comparison to other NY counties.
In Kings County, NY (which is home to Brooklyn; according to Wikipedia, it is New York’s most populous borough and the second most densly populated county in the US) in 2012, there was a spike in hate crimes against jews.
All of these findings are corroborated in Hate Crime in New York State 2012 Annual Report: https://www.criminaljustice.ny.gov/crimnet/ojsa/hate-crime-in-nys-2012-annual-report.pdf
Follow Up Information:
There was another massive spike in New York hate crimes in 2018, after the above dataset was collected. Again, the largest increase in hate crimes was experienced by Jews. https://www.huffpost.com/entry/jews-top-target-for-hate-crimes-last-year-in-new-york_b_5a553361e4b0baa6abf16224
One study, based off of data from the New York Police department found that in 2018 there was an 82% spike in antisemitic hate crimes in New York City: https://www.jpost.com/Diaspora/Massive-82-percent-spike-in-antisemitic-hate-crimes-in-New-York-City-NYPD-finds-588582
One year later, in 2019, New York City experienced a record number of anti-Semitic hate crimes, the highest since 1992. https://www.cityandstateny.com/articles/politics/ask-experts/why-have-anti-semitic-risen-new-york.html
The rise in anti-Semitic hate crimes has been found in other major cities across the U.S. as well including Chicago and Los Angeles, all three recording an 18 year peak, surpassing the 2012 spike shown above.https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/05/nyregion/hate-crimes-rise-nyc.html
As these hate crimes icnrease, hate crimes againt African-Americans remain the most common racially motivated hate crimes, but since 2018, there has also been a significant rise in hate crimes where violence has been used against Latinos and the transgender community. https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/how-anti-semitism-rises-on-the-left-and-right
Follow Up Summary:
Disadvantages of the Dataset:
One aspect of the dataset that I find lacking is that there is no information on people committing the hate crimes. I understand that this is a complicated matter with accusations, victim discriptions, arrests and convictions, etc., all of which can present distorting information. However, a quick search of the NYPD website results in Crime and Enforcement activity in New York City Reports where this type of information is broken down for many different types of crimes - one example below - but not hate crimes.
NYPD Report Graph
Also, since the data is gathered via the NYPD, it is likely to provide serious underestimates, especially for particular types of hate crimes.
Another aspect of the dataset that is failing is that it does not allow for a study of the intersectionality of hate crimes. For example, are anti-gay male crimes more likely to occur against gay black men than gay white, hispanic, asian, or native american men?
The dataset appears to be an underrepresentation of hate crime occurances. Lines 232-237 show the majority of counties throughout New York State to have 0 or 1 hate crimes recorded. That undermines the accuracy and validity of the overall numbers, particularly in the rural areas, with predominantly cis-white male police agents.
Advantages of the Dataset:
A positive aspect of the dataset is that it does break down each incident by type of crime, which is helpful to distinguish violent crimes from property crimes.
Arranging the data by county allows for important demographic analysis, as we did above, through application of census data. Knowing what the demographics are of communities where the most hate crimes are being committed will certainly influence where people choose to live and work. For example, being in an interracial same-sex relationship it was very important to my partner and I to live in a neighborhood where we would be less likely to experience attacks or harrassment based on our relationship.
The types of individual hate crimes covered is fairly extensive, however there could be a category for anti-immigrant, which overlaps with some other categories, but has unique characteristics of its own.
Two paths I would like to study about the dataset are:
Looking at the methodology and reporting that were utilized to collect the data. Was it based on victim reporting or police reporting? Was it standard practice to report the details of every hate crime or were some excluded? How was the informaiton gathered and collated overall.
I would like to take a closer look at the rural counties over time to see if there are some nuances to hate crime reports in those areas. The problem is that there are just so few overall crimes reported, particularly in the rural areas.
Two things I would do to follow up after seeing these results: Well, a few more than 2 …
I would like to examine other factors impacting NYC in 2012 that could have impacted the spike that year in antisemitic hate crimes, and look for similarities, differences, and responses to the new spike we have experienced since 2018.
How do these rates compare with cities across the US? Was this a fairly universal trend? If not what were the distinguishing factors? Population density? Population histories? etc. I was living in Crown Heights, Brooklyn in 2012 when there was a spike in anti-Jewish crime. There is a large Hasidic Jewish population there and also a large West Indian population and there was a huge peak in violence between the two groups at the time. The violence became so freqent that police were stationed daily at every corner of the neighborhood. How much did this conflict impact the 2012 spike, if at all?
There seems to have been a large drop in hate crimes between 2012 and 2013. What factors influenced this drop? Could those factors be useful in creating strategies to reduce the current spike in hate crimes we are experiencing right now throughout the country?
I definitely want to follow up and see what happens in the rate of hate crimes in the few years following the upcoming presidential election.
Conviction rates for hate crimes, particularly broken down by race and punishment type. Were cis-white males convicted at the same rates and with the same severity of punishment of people of color? What percentage of the crimes were committed by cis-white males? I would want to explore more of the demographics of the people who committed the hate crimes and examine any data available regarding their psychological state and mental reasoning at the time the crimes were committed.
There are many upstate New York counties included in the dataset (but not all). The number of hate crimes shows as lower for the upstate New York counties, but having been raised there, I know that the incidents occur frequently but go unreported due to the lack of response from local police. Since reporting of hate crimes is not required, as we saw in the articles above, I would be curious to investigate the history of hate crimes reported by smaller county police departments to the state, if at all. It would be interesting to conduct a study to inquire whether the police in upstate New York would be resistant to reporting that data if it was required by law.