United States of America

The Department of Justice's (DoJ) Office of Justice funded two reports that give new insight into how often youths and members of the Latino community in the U.S. experience and witness bias-motivated incidents, such as bullying or harassment, and hate crimes. The findings can help policymakers, law enforcement, school professionals and service organizations improve the targeting and content of prevention and intervention programmes. The first study, "Comprehensive Measure of Youth Experiences with Bias Victimization: Findings from the Youth Bias Victimization Questionnaire (YBVQ)" developed a new survey tool to measure youth bias victimization, from bullying to hate crimes. The second study, "Understanding and Measuring Bias Victimization Against Latinos" showed significant differences between men and women on some of the more serious events, such as physical assaults and assaults with a weapon, but not on the overall rate. Only 18.2 per cent of Latinos experiencing bias crimes sought help from any formal authority (e.g., police, medical providers, victim service providers or attorneys) while 68.1 per cent of victims sought informal help, generally from friends or family. An article summarizing the two studies with links to each is available here.

The DoJ's Community Relations Service supported campus community groups as they work to prevent and respond to bias incidents and hate crimes on campuses and in cities throughout the country. It facilitated regular sessions with a planning group comprised of campus police officers and college officials, and conducted training events at the college's LSC-University Park campus for approximately 70 campus law enforcement officers. The training events, which can be delivered both in-person and remotely, will help improve communication and collaboration with Sikh American and Muslim American communities. More information about the training programme is available here.