Discretionary Defenders and Selective Justice: Institutional Bias in Hate Crime Policing and its Link to the Recording, Classification, and Clearance of Transgender Homicides

• In Event: Variation in Racialized Victimization and Post-Victimization Reporting Processes Among Victims of Bias-Motivated and Other Crimes

Abstract

Our recent work revealed significant variation in how American police departments report hate crimes to the government, identifying three strategies: (a) reporting at least one hate crime over several years, (b) refusing to report hate crime statistics altogether, and (c) submitting zero reports without recording hate crimes (Mills et al., 2024). While we primarily focused on the latter strategy, we also emphasized that institutional biases very likely extended beyond “ceremonious” agencies, affecting even those that appeared to be genuinely reporting hate crimes. In this research, we analyze variation in these policing practices, with a particular focus on those purportedly compliant agencies and their role in addressing violence against transgender people. Despite facing heightened risks of targeted violence, the transgender community’s victimization is often selectively underreported—even by agencies classified as compliant in aggregate data. Using a newly published dataset of transgender homicide victims (Lantz et al., 2024), we assess whether compliance predicts transgender homicides being (a) recorded, (b) classified as a hate crime by police, victim networks, or community members, and (c) cleared by arrest. Applying intersectional frameworks, we reveal how institutional bias perpetuates the structural erasure of transgender victims and communities.

Authors

• Jack Mitchel Mills, Florida State University

• Brendan Lantz, Florida State University

• Lexi Faulkner, Florida State University

• Marin Wenger, Florida State University

• Parker Johnson, Florida State University