Arizona struggles to fight against hate crimes without legislation

According to the FBI, hate crimes are on the rise in Arizona, however the state lacks comprehensive hate crime laws and does not categorize hate crimes as separate chargers.

According to Arizona law, prejudicial motivation bias can be considered an aggravating factor if there was a motivation of hate against a victim’s race, disability, religion, or sexual orientation.

“The state of Arizona does not have the category of hate crimes. What they have is it becomes an aggravating factor if there’s prejudicial motivation. So if it was vandalism and it was racially motivated, it would become aggravated vandalism,” said Adam Wolfe, public information officer for Arizona State University Police Department.

States can voluntarily report hate crimes, regardless of legislation, to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting program. According to the UCR report in 2020, Arizona recorded 282 hate crimes, the highest the number has been since 2001.

According to the data provided by the FBI, only 81 out of Arizona’s 125 law enforcement agencies reported data to the UCR. This number is lower than the previous UCR published by the FBI, meaning that while hate crimes are underreported because fewer agencies are reporting, there is still a rise in hate crimes.

Both the rise of hate crimes in Arizona and the underreported data submitted by the state poses if the lack of a hate crime category in state laws hinders reporting and investigating these crimes.

“There is a lack of proper investigation because how do you define a hate crime? And does that police officer or does that person who’s making the report know what a hate crime really is, said Azza Abuseif, executive director of CAIR-Arizona (Council of American-Islamic Relations).

The gray area: hate crimes and aggravating factors
Hate crimes are classified and used in federal law to show bias in order to keep targeted groups of people safe. According to the FBI, “Hate crimes are the highest priority of the FBI’s civil rights program because of the devastating impact they have on families and communities.”

Arizona classifies prejudicial motivation as an aggravating factor, but not as a hate crime. It must be noted that hate crimes and aggravating factors should not be mistaken for one another. Aggravated factors are circumstances that make a crime more serious. Examples of aggravated factors under A.R.S. 13-701 include:

• The person was hired to commit the crime
• The defendant had a prior felony conviction within 10 years of the current offense
• Hiding and waiting to surprisingly attack the victim as part of the felony offense

In the long list of aggravating factors in Arizona you will also find prejudicial motivation. “Essentially all prejudicial motivation means is bias toward a certain group, be it bias because of race, gender, religion, sexual orientation, whatever it is, it’s biased towards that that caused the crime,” said Wolfe.

Reporting and tracking hate crimes are used to show bias against marginalized groups, as the crime has an impact that is beyond a singular victim, it has an impact against entire groups of people. Charging a hate crime as an aggravating factor defeats the purpose of hate crime charges, by sweeping a perpetrator's bias under the rug.

“When it comes to aggravated charges, anybody could get that for many different reasons. A hate crime is you being biased, so I’m very disappointed in the fact that we don’t have that here in Arizona,” said Abuseif.

On Dec.8 2020, a vandalism occurred at Arizona State University’s Hayden Library in the library’s interfaith room, where Islamic literature and the Quran were found destroyed. Abuseif spoke on behalf of CAIR, calling for a hate crime investigation after the vandalism.

According to records received by ASU PD, bias was found in the vandalism, resulting in the vandalism to be charged as aggravated vandalism, but the term “hate crime” was not included in the documents.

The issue with this charge is the vandalism was going to be charged as aggravated vandalism, regardless of bias found, because the value of the property was unlawfully damaged, which appears as an aggravated factor under Arizona law. This results in an unclear understanding to the public if the vandalism was biased, resulting in a further public misunderstanding on what a hate crime even is.

Just one month before the vandalism at Hayden Library, antisemtic flyers were found posted all over ASU’s campus, that stated that Jews control the world’s government, banks, media, big businesses, academia, and pornography.

Executive Director of the Hillel Jewish Student Center at ASU, Debbie Yunker Kail explained that these flyers were nothing out of the norm and their organization sees a couple flyering incidents every academic year.

“Whether it’s one flyer, two flyers, or 100 flyers, any amount is too much here. That is not what we stand for,” said Kail.

This incident again posed questions from Jewish students on ASU campus, as they requested the University to make a statement about the incident.

“Was it a crime to put those flyers up? Was that a crime or was that just, not cool?” asked Kail.

The call to action: fighting hate with legislation

In 2021, FBI Phoenix launched a hate crime reporting campaign in the state of Arizona, after the alarming data shown from the UCR in 2021.

“We know that, historically, hate crimes are underreported. To help our community recognize the importance of the issue and to encourage people to report incidents to law enforcement, the FBI in Phoenix is launching a hate crimes awareness campaign throughout the state,” read the statement from FBI Phoenix.
As hate crimes continue to increase in the state, the data provided by the state is still vastly underreported.
Fighting against hate crimes seems like an impossible task with underreported data. In order to fight against prejudice in a society, crimes with bias must be both tracked and reported.
“It’s happening everywhere. A hate crime is a hate crime and it doesn’t matter if you’re from the Muslim community or LGBTQ+ community, it’s still a hate crime and we don't have protections for folks right now because there is no legislation,” said Abuseif.

Hate crimes can only be tracked and reported efficiently when there is a distinct definition and category in state laws for hate crimes, which Arizona fails to have.