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Who Is The Target Of Hate Crimes?

Anyone who is victimized on the basis of their membership with an identifiable group is the victim of a hate crime. If you identify yourself as a Jewish person and you are assaulted because of this you are then considered to be a victim of a hate crime. Similarly, if a person were to vandalize your property with spray-paint swastikas or other anti-ethnic symbols you would also be considered to be a victim of a hate crime. The most likely targets of hate crimes are racial minorities and people who identify as having a sexual orientation that is not strictly heterosexual. However, people who identify with other groups can also be victimized by a hate motivated offender.
In 2008, Statistics Canada released the results of the Hate Crime Supplemental Survey which reported on the prevalence of hate crimes in Canada. It is important to note here that the statistics reported were obtained from police services and therefore only include the crimes which were reported to police. These statistics likely underestimate the actual number of hate crimes perpetrated in Canada, as many people choose to not report them. Black was the most commonly targeted racial group, comprising 4 in 10 hate crimes. The next most commonly targeted racial group was East Indian and Pakistani, who were the target of 12% of the racially motivated hate crimes. Additionally, Statistics Canada reported that the Jewish faith was the most commonly targeted religion, with two-thirds of all religiously motivated hate crimes being committed against people of the Jewish faith. The third most prevalent (but the most violent) hate crimes reported were those motivated by prejudice towards people with a certain sexual orientation. 75% of these crimes were violent, compared to 38% of racially motivated and 25% of religiously motivated hate crimes.

Who Commits Hate Crimes?

Just as anyone can be a victim of a hate crime, anyone can also be a perpetrator. The offenders can be either adults or youths and the crimes premeditated or of opportunity. An extreme example was the “London nail bomber,” David Copeland, who filled homemade bombs with nails and placed them in communities highly populated by blacks, Bangladeshis, and homosexuals in London, England. Copeland, who killed 3 people and injured 126 with his bombs, was reported to have been a member of the far-right British National Party, a leader in the National Socialist Movement, and admitted to holding neo-Nazi views. He reported that he was hoping to start a ‘racial war’ by setting off the bombs, which were detonated over a period of 3 weekends. While this crime was very violent in nature, a large number of hate crimes do not involve this level of violence.
Statistics Canada, using data from the General Social Survey of 2004 and the Hate Crime Supplemental Survey of 2006, reports that the large majority of perpetrators of hate crimes are males between the ages of 12-24 years old. The perpetrators of these crimes tended to be strangers to their victims; 77% of victims of police reported hate crimes did not know their attacker, compared to 33% of all other victims of violent crimes.