disabilities, each of the five scenarios consisted of a different category of disability that

spans at least physical, sensory and mental disabilities. Miller (2001) obtained the crime

scenarios for the original survey from the Southern Poverty Law Center. When contacted,

they do not track crimes committed against people with disabilities as with other

protected categories. Therefore, the crime scenarios were obtained from a review of

available literature that reported specifics on hate crimes committed against people with

disabilities.

One possible flaw with the original Hate Crime Survey constructed by Miller (2001)

consists of the content of the scenarios. In a national survey of police officers and police

officer supervisors, McDevitt learned from 610 respondents that graffiti or bias symbols

at the crime scene, offender membership in a hate group, and bias charged language

constituted the top three most important factors in determining whether a crime was

potentially motivated by bias (Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2000). In other words, the

above factors indicate to an officer that bias motivation is possible and are considered

cues to investigate further. There was disparity across protected categories in the crime

scenarios in Miller's (2001) survey. For example, only one of the crime scenarios in the

gender category included a bias indicator whereas all but one of the scenarios in the

religion category included a bias indicator. As a result, the crime scenarios were modified

only to include at least one of the top three bias indicators described in the McDevitt

study (Bureau of Justice Statistics). The goal was to maintain the integrity of the original

crime scenarios as much as possible. Therefore, if a bias indicator was present, it was not

changed. However, bias indicators were added to those scenarios where no indicator was

present. The items from each protected category include one item where the offender is a