Due to the increasing rate of hate crimes in US, the President of United States approved a law on 23rd April 1990, known as the Hate Crime Statistics Act. This law required the country’s Attorney General to collect data of crimes that were motivated by prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, sexual orientation, religion, or race. And on the basis of the data collected through Uniform Crime reporting program, establish guidelines. These crimes were to include destruction of property, intimidation, both simple and aggravated assault, rape and murder motivated by hate.
Also as per this Act, the data for such crimes were required to be collected from every state which prompted the North Carolina General Assembly to enact the legislation of hate crime. As per the legislation, stiffer penalties were to be given for crimes that were committed on the basis of hate. The legislations also allowed the funding of North Carolina Justice Academy to provide training for the law enforcement agencies to appropriately report hate crimes.
North Carolina’s Division of Criminal information which closely works with FBI provides assistance to law enforcement agencies in the state to report hate crimes. This assistance includes provision of forms, assistance with reporting and analysis of statistics. The crime reporting forms have been modified by DCI to separately enter information regarding hate crimes.
Between the years 1992 and 1994, very few hate crime reports were submitted to DCI. In the year 1995, 52 incidents of hate crime were reported to DCI, in the year 1996, 34 incidents of hate crime were reported by 83 agencies and in the year 1997, 42 incidents of hate crime were reported by 22 agencies. These reports certainly show limited participation, but also highlight the nature of the occurrence of hate crimes.
As of 2011, the crime rate across NC has fallen by 0.9% while there has been a drop of 5.2% in violent crimes. This makes crime rate of 2011, the lowest since the year 1977.
The office of NC Attorney General has welcomed the drop in crime rate and has requested for more investments into law enforcement agencies to fight the newer trends of crime. Even though there has been a drop in the overall rate of crime, the rate of murder did go up and certain areas also saw an increase of criminal activities.
As compared to the rate of index crime per 100,000 people in 2010, there has been a decrease of 0.9%. A drop of 5.2% has been seen on the rate of violent crime per 100,000 people. There has been a decline in the rate of rapes, which has fallen by 2.8%. Robberies in NC have gone down by 4.1%. Aggravated assaults have gone down by 6% and rate of murders has seen an increase of 5.9%.
The rate of overall property crimes which included vehicle theft, larceny and burglary has seen a decline of 0.6%. Report specifically for vehicle theft had fallen by 7.9%. Even though there has been a decline in reports of burglary by 0.9%, larceny saw a rise of 0.4%. Reports of Arson, not mentioned with the over all property crime saw a decline of 9.2%
While the arrest for adults in reference to index crime rose by 2%, the arrest for Juveniles decreased by 6%. Arrest of adults for all crimes declined by 3% and arrests of Juveniles for all crimes fell by 7%. While the 2011 report is no longer online, you can find the latest annual summary report by clicking on this link: https://ncdoj.gov/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/2020-Annual-Report-FINAL.pdf