What is a hate crime?
Informally, a hate crime could be defined as a crime committed because the victim was a member of a specific demographic group. Formally, the federal definition of a hate crime was put into law by The Civil Rights Act of 1968. In this act, hate crimes were defined as crimes committed on the basis of race, color, religion or national origin, with the prerequisite that the victim be attempting to engage in one of six types of federally protected activities (activities such as acting as a juror, voting, attending school, etc.).
Although hate crimes were outlawed many years earlier, it was not until 1990 that Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which required the attorney general (and by extension the FBI) to collect data about crimes that involve prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.
