Measuring Changes in Bias-Motivated Attacks

Evidence from Anti-Asian Violence During the Covid-19 Pandemic

Datos Bibliográficos

ID21561007
AutoresAlexey Knorre (0000-0002-5079-9573, Boston College), Alex Knorre (University of South Florida), Britte van Tiem (0000-0003-2723-1469, Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice and School of Public Policy, University of Maryland), AARON CHALFIN (0000-0003-4810-5146, University of Pennsylvania, autor de correspondencia)
Año2025
Volumen42
Número6
Páginas1043-1072
Fecha de publicación2025-09-19
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaJustice Quarterly (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0741-8825 • E-ISSN: 1745-9109
EditorialInforma UK Limited (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/07418825.2025.2487651
OpenAlexW4410016985
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas39

Hate crimes are notoriously difficult to measure. We propose a way to measure changes in group-specific exposure to violence using data on crimes that are potentially bias-motivated. We use this approach to study whether anti-Asian violence rose in the United States during the earliest phase of the COVID-19 pandemic. Using data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System on inter-race public violence, we find that while public violence declined among all Americans after March 2020, the share of public violence directed at Asian-Americans by people who were previously unknown to them—or were acquaintances—rose more than it did for other Americans. While this relationship did not hold among an auxiliary sample of large US cities, the national evidence is consistent with a modest increase in bias-motivated violence directed towards Asian-Americans. Beyond these specific results, our research offers an approach to studying potentially bias-motivated crimes that relies less urgently on hate crimes data

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak · Criminology · Pandemic · Political science · Crime Patterns and Interventions · Medicine · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Terrorism, Counterterrorism, and Political Violence · Virology