Hate crimes divide neighborhoods and breed a sense of mistrust and fear within communities.
This is why I have long supported legislation aimed at protecting citizens from crimes based on race, ethnicity, religion, gender, disability, or sexual orientation. While past efforts to enact this legislation have received strong bipartisan support, I believe that we must now work to ensure that this legislation is not simply supported, but actually approved and signed into law by the President. Despite the fact that hate crimes are frequently under-reported and therefore underprosecuted, we know that hate crimes occur more often than we might think. In 1998, that number rose to 7,755. To combat the problem, I sponsored the Hate Crimes Sentencing Enhancement Act in 1993, which was subsequently signed into law as part of the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994.