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Bias crimes: Social media, varying state laws and reporting complicate the fight. Officials are leaning on outreach to help the vulnerable

By NJSBA Staff posted 05-13-2020 05:40 PM

  

The rising tide of bias crimes, the role social media plays in them, and what law enforcement and other organizations can do to investigate the crimes and help vulnerable communities took center stage at a panel yesterday at the 2020 NJSBA Virtual Annual Meeting.

Hate crimes remained high in 2018, with 7,120 hate crimes across the country, reported Amy Feinman, the northeast area civil rights counsel for the Anti-Defamation League. Bias crimes in New Jersey are also on the rise, partly due to better reporting as well as a series of “highly concerning incidents,” she said.

Several presenters noted that a significant challenge is that there are vast disparities in what states report and what laws are in place around the country.

“Hate crime laws across the United States look very different depending on the state that you live in,” said Feinman. New Jersey is comprehensive and inclusive, yet five states do not have hate crime laws on the books at all.

John Farmer Jr., a former state Attorney General who is now the director of the Eagleton Institute of Politics, has studied ways vulnerable populations have been targets of bias and hate crimes around the world and studied ways to address the issue.

Social media, he said, can often be directly pointed to as fuel for bias incidents. 

“This is really something new. … the use of social media as a vehicle for delivery and inspiration of hate messages that result in crimes,” he said. “We can correlate upticks and spikes in messages of hate on social media platforms with crimes.”

A key tool in preventing these crimes is developing a way to identify social media messaging in real time and defeat it with educated responses, said Farmer.

In New Jersey, officials are trying to be proactive, said Deputy Chief Erik Dabb of the New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice. Attorney General Gurbir Grewal has made bias investigations and community outreach a priority. The goal, said Dabb, is to foster greater trust in law enforcement among vulnerable communities so law enforcement can track incidents.

Deputy Attorney General Bryn Whittle added that outreach means connecting with a wide variety of stakeholders through public forums; outreach in schools and messaging on the department’s social media platforms.

The panel, titled “Bias Crimes,” also included attorney Brandon Minde and Rachel Wainer Apter, Director of the Division on Civil Rights.

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