Our visualizations have given us a better understanding of the Hate Crime Data and have allowed us to come to conclusions about Hate Crime in San Diego. We discovered that the timeline for Hate Crimes is important as the years leading up to 2001 generally increased with 2001 as the highest peak which we attributed to the aftermath of 9/11. After 2001, however, there was a slow decrease over the years. The most common locations for Hate Crimes to be committed are the public highway, road, alley, street, or sidewalk and the most common form of offense is destruction, damage, or vandalism of property. One of our major findings is that race is the most popular motivation behind the offender’s Hate Crimes as over half of the cases stemmed from racial issues.
We also discovered that the Normal Heights neighborhood and south of the Little Italy neighborhood have the highest crime rates in San Diego. Our investigation helped us determine that there is a significant amount of both male suspects and male victims compared to the female counterparts and that the most targeted races are White, Black and Hispanic.
Given our findings, we can suggest more surveillance in roads, alleys, and streets in particular near Normal Heights and Little Italy may help prevent Hate Crimes. When most people think of ‘Hate Crimes’ they may instantly think of contact violence, however as we uncovered, the most common form of Hate Crime is destruction and vandalism. An offender may destroy someone’s property based on their biases, but the victim may not have property insurance and may not get compensation. For this reason, our analysis could be used to argue that there should be legislation to compensate victims when they lack property insurance. We also discovered race is the most prominent motivation for committing a Hate Crime, therefore we recommend training seminars in workplaces and schools that focus on racial biases. Finally, we believe that raising awareness of the nature of Hate Crimes and decreasing the stigma of reporting for the victims would be beneficial, as increased data could in turn help create better policies or procedures for combating Hate Crime. Awareness campaigns should aim to incorporate strategies for people of all backgrounds and cultures, particularly those that may be less likely to feel comfortable reporting. We understand that much more can be done to help decrease Hate Crimes in San Diego and across the nation, but based on our findings we have provided some suggestions where San Diego can start.