What percentage of crimes are racially motivated?

Answer 1

The answer depends on whether you're referring to so-called "Hate Crimes", where the motivation for the criminal act is solely the victim's race, color, creed, religion, etc., or if you are asking about how many crimes have race as an important factor in the victimology of the crime. Hate crimes are nearly unique from a legal standpoint in that they require the perpetrator's mindset to be utterly clear, and for it to be revealed as well. When a white man murders a black man and the charge is simply one of murder, the law basically has to ascertain if a criminal act occurred, and then make decisions about whether the perpetrator intended to commit a crime. Hate crimes, on the other hand, not only need mens rea and actus reas (intent and act), but also need to go past intent and try and get a handle on why the intent existed. Because most crimes of violence are not the result of a logical excercise, but arise more from irrational causes, it's very difficult to even relate the criminal's perceived actions to what really happened in a physical evidentiary sense. Trying to get a handle on the why of it can quickly become nearly impossible. This is extremely difficult to do and, some argue, may not be the proper realm of the law (i.e. you're entitled to dislike people for any number of reasons -- rational or otherwise). If you're asking if race presents a factor in criminology (as opposed to a sole motivation), then yes, it does. Particularly in crimes against people, you'll find that race plays a role in that the majority of violent crimes occur when both the perpetrator and the victim are of the same race. This factoid presents problems of its own, however, in that, in areas where segregation is not entirely uniform, you'll find a higher incidence of same-race folks, so it's difficult to say if race is part of the criminals' selection process, or simply a matter of statistics. White collar crime, however, seems to be a lot more egalitarian, in that the factors at play don't seem to relate directly to race as much as economics.