It would require realistic funding and the guidance of a blue ribbon panel with investigative staff to undertake such an examination of the forces behind under reporting that preclude us from understanding the extent and severity of hate crime and the context of its intractable occurrence. Without basic understanding of its true prevalence, there can be little appreciation of its consequence in any community and we will be unable to gain a handle on how we might seek and apply solutions to hate crime and its tragic curtailing of life opportunities for people who already start from a disadvantaged position of unpopularity and social opprobrium, which is why they are vulnerable to harm in the first place.

It is why we recognize that they are a statistically vulnerable population in need of especial protections to which these statistics attest. Without the basic understanding of the actual occurrence and nature of hate crime we can have only false notions and impaired insight into what resources of the justice system must be allocated and where the allocation is needed. Hate crime is under reported because it is so undervalued at the highest levels of government. If it is so devalued by authorities it will necessarily be discounted all the way down to the the witness on the street, in the workplace.

It will be felt by the victim to be somehow their own failure, which could be only compounded by their reporting their own mistake of being in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is an abdication of responsibility by the highest elected officials that their leadership is lacking in demanding accountability from appointees, supervisors and commissioners in government to insist on following the law on reporting hate crime, not only by government agencies and departments, but also by community institutions such as schools, courts, hospitals, social service agencies as well as police and prosecutors.

Another fundamental aspect of hate crime that requires examination by legal scholars, philosophers of jurisprudence and policy makers that is a large factor in hate crime under reporting is setting the bar of proof at the impossibly high attainability standards to show empirical evidence of motivation. The burden of proof must be shifted from the victim’s evidence of the aggressor’s reasons for attack to the victim’s assertion of perception or belief his aggressor’s action was partially motivated by hate or bias. That is the present law in a host of other countries, who have had a much longer experience with hate crime as a legal construct than we relative latecomers.

If hate crime is so devalued by Suffolk’s political leadership, who along with our policing and prosecutorial leadership, could not find the time or the interest to demonstrate their concern or expectation of priority hate crime should have in our communities, there can be little doubt we can expect residents and institutions to exhibit more concern or interest in reporting hate crime. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy that accommodates the political establishment perfectly well: hate crime is under reported because those who see advantages in minimizing its consequences and importance under value it.

Hate crime has always been used to facilitate enforcement of the distribution of power, status and wealth; it has special interests who benefit from its under reporting and pushing hate crime to the nether reaches of attention and focus.

The media (myself included) have been talking a lot about why no victims are attending, perhaps because the task force members themselves talked a lot about it in planning sessions, but I don’t remember it coming up at the forum.

Here’s my take on the forum:

http://bit.ly/1kel9Q