NJ Hate Crime is Among Highest in the Country
A new report out, is bad news for New Jersey. Hates crimes remain a big problem in our country, and New Jersey leads most of the nation in the number of hate crimes reported.
The report ranks New Jersey third in the country in hates crimes per capita with just over 64 per one million people.
Of the 581 hate crimes committed, the vast majority were based ancestry, ethnicity, race and religion.
The state with the most reported hate crimes is Washington, DC. The rate of hate crimes in DC is a whopping 314 per million people.
A large percentage of hate crimes in Washington, DC were directed toward people based on sexual orientation. That led the DC police to re-focus their efforts on better dealing with crimes against the LGBTQ+ community.
The report blames the spike in bias crimes against the LGBTQ+ community on the fact that the region has a large number of commuters coming into the city on a regular basis.
The state with the lowest number of hates crimes reported is Arkansas. However, there's quite a bit of controversy over Arkansas' hate crimes laws. Arkansas didn't even have their first hate crime laws in place until their Governor, Asa Hutchinson signed the first hate law crime in 2021.
There are those in Arkansas who believe the laws don't go far enough because they don't go far enough in dealing with crimes based on race, ethnicity, gender and sexual orientation.
