Bias-Motivated Homicide

Abstract:

While an impressive body of research mostly focusing on descriptions of victims and offenders has developed around bias crime since official data collection began in 1991, little is known about the situational and behavioral dynamics that are involved in bias homicides. The purpose of this research is to analyze bias-motivated homicides using multidimensional scaling techniques to examine the behavioral characteristics of crime scenes for information that could be used to link offenders to crime scene behaviors and create a meaningful classification system for bias homicides. The data for this research represent all of the bias homicides reported to the UCR program in the ten years (1991-2001) following the passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA) of 1990. The case files of the bias homicides were coded to analyze the co-occurrences of behaviors and demographics for the presence of behavioral themes. These themes will be used to establish...