committed against persons with disabilities. From this analysis, there appears to be no

pattern for which states report and no explanation for the disparity across states.

Bias Crime and Gender

 There are factors associated with gender motivated hate crimes that warrant

discussion here. First, at the time disability was included in the Hate Crime Statistics Act,

a number of other groups lobbied for inclusion in the Act, including gender, children, and

the elderly (McMahon et al., 2004). Although gender was not included in the

reauthorization of the act, approximately 20 states include gender in state-level hate

crime legislation. As a result, hate crimes motivated by animus towards gender are

monitored by the Southern Poverty Law Center as well as other local interest groups and

researchers.

 Individuals who opposed the inclusion of gender in the Hate Crime Statistics Act

cited the following reasons: 1) Perpetrators of a hate crime have little of no relationship

to the victim. Because crimes against women are often perpetrated by individuals known

to them, crimes against women don't fit the hate crime model; 2) special laws already

exist that address violence against women; 3) the addition of gender into the hate crime

category will overwhelm data collection; and 4) men who attack women do not

necessarily hate them. (McPhail, 2002). The first objection, perpetrators of a hate crimes

have little or no relationship to the victim, is of particular interest to this discussion

because: 1) research suggests that the overwhelming majority of perpetrators of crimes

against people with disabilities are known to them; and 2) the notion that a perpetrator of

a hate crime can not know the victim is a misinformed belief (Bureau of Justice Statistics,

2000; Lawrence, 1999; National Institute of Justice, 1999). In fact, perpetrators of hate

crimes can be neighbors or co-workers (McPhail, 2002). If misinformation purporting