Exploring Youth Bias Crime in Schools

• In Event: Hate Crime Offending

Abstract

While there has been an increase in both media and academic attention to the issue of bias crimes over the past several years, there remains a significant gap in our understanding of youth-specific bias crime. Recent statistics from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) show that youth represent nearly one-fifth of all bias crime offenders, and approximately 24% of bias crime victims. Moreover, approximately 22% of all violent bias crimes are reportedly occurring in schools. With youth bias crime involvement accounting for such a large proportion of overall bias crimes, and the high occurrence of violent bias crime in particular happening in schools, it seems a critical time to unpack the available data in order to determine the extent to which any emerging trends can be discerned. The current study explores the phenomenon of youth bias crime by utilizing data from the most recent NCVS. We expect to find clear patterns of youth bias crime victimization emerge as we disaggregate the data by bias type, and victimization location (i.e. in school versus out-of-school). Identifying emerging trends can help provide more targeted intervention strategies for addressing this subcategory of school violence.

Authors

• Carrie Maloney, East Stroudsburg University of Pennsylvania

• Matthew Fetzer, Shippensburg University