While the number of crimes motivated by LGBT bias in the country rose last year and the number of anti-LGBT murders hit an all-time high, violence against LGBT people in Pennsylvania appears to have significantly decreased.
The new statistics released last week were part of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs’ 2008 Violence Report, which analyzed data from 13 LGBT service organizations throughout the country, including Equality Advocates Pennsylvania.
The total number of anti-LGBT victims in the nation jumped from 2,359 in 2007 to 2,424 in 2008, accounting for about a 2-percent increase. In Pennsylvania, however, the number of such victims dropped from 46 in 2007 to 36 the following year, an approximate 22-percent decrease.
Amara Chaudhry, legal director of Equality Advocates, cautioned that the numbers could represent an “artificial decrease.”
Chaudhry noted that Equality Advocates undertook efforts last year to raise awareness among domestic-violence and victims-services organizations about how to handle complaints of LGBT violence.
Chaudhry said Equality Advocates reported to NCAVP the calls it received from victims and service organizations, which she said may be on the decline because of this increased awareness and their improved ability to handle such issues.
“In 2008, our organization engaged in substantial outreach efforts to victims’ services agencies,” Chaudhry said. “It is possible that these agencies began referring fewer cases to our organization as a result of our outreach efforts.”
Pennsylvania was among six regions that reported a decrease in the number of victims, but several other locales, particularly those in the Midwest, reported a sharp upswing in the number of victims, such as Milwaukee reporting a 64-percent increase; Minnesota a 48-percent increase; and Chicago a 42-percent increase.
The number of bias-motivated incidents in Pennsylvania also decreased from 112 to 55 over this period, and the number of offenders dropped from 156 to 36.
Pennsylvania reported one LGBT bias-related murder in 2007 and none last year.
Throughout the country, however, there were 29 reported murders motivated by the victim’s perceived sexual orientation — a 27-percent increase over the previous year. The 2008 number is the same as in 1999, the year Matthew Shepard was killed, and the highest number of murders the NCAVP has ever seen.
While the number of national incidents decreased slightly, from 1,688 to 1,677, the number of offenders also increased, from 2,430 to 2,575.
There was a 29-percent jump in the number of female offenders nationwide, but male offenders still accounted for about 75 percent of that population. Approximately 39 percent of offenders were white and 37 percent were black, with the majority between the ages of 19-29.
Nearly 80 percent of the total number of victims identified as either gay or lesbian, and about 56 percent of victims identified as male, while 29 percent identified as female, which represented a 6-percent increase since 2007. Similarly in Pennsylvania, the majority of the victims identified as male, although the number of female victims decreased by 50 percent from the previous year.
While nationwide the number of victims ages 15-18 increased nearly 118 percent, that number actually fell 50 percent in Pennsylvania; the majority of local victims were between ages 40-49.
While the highest reported type of violence was harassment both nationwide and in Pennsylvania, the number of sex assaults in the nation increased 48 percent, continuing a three-year trend. There were no anti-LGBT-motivated sex assaults reported in Pennsylvania.
About 28 percent of the incidents were reported to police, but physical abuse from police officers nationwide increased 150 percent from 2007-08. In Pennsylvania, law-enforcement officials made up the second-highest classification of offenders.
Chaudhry said that while the Philadelphia Police Department “has been working hard to be more sensitive to LGBT clients and to LGBT issues,” the agency has still received a high number of complaints — particularly from prisoners — of anti-LGBT bias at the hands of police officers.
Chaudhry said Equality Advocates plans to work with the Philadelphia Police Liaison Committee, as well as the district attorney’s office, to continue to heighten awareness about anti-LGBT violence, and will also reach out to LGBT organizations throughout Pennsylvania to garner and share ideas and suggestions on the most effective means of reducing bias-motivated violence.
Pennsylvania Sen. Jim Ferlo (D-38th Dist.) introduced a bill in February that would add sexual orientation, gender identity, gender, ancestry and physical and mental disability as protected classes under the state’s current hate-crimes law. Such groups had previously been included in the Pennsylvania Ethnic Intimidation Law, but were stricken following a 2007 Commonwealth Court ruling that found the legislative process by which these classes were included in the law was unconstitutional.
The bill is currently in the Senate Judiciary Committee.
Chaudhry noted that the lack of hate-crimes protections for the LGBT community in Pennsylvania is counterproductive in eradicating bias-motivated violence.
“Removing LGBT victims from the ethnic-intimidation statute suggests that hate-motivated violence targeted at LGBT victims is somewhat less egregious and, therefore, less worthy of the elevated sentencing ramifications to which other hate-motivated crimes are subject,” she said.
At the federal level, the U.S. House approved the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act in April, and the legislation is awaiting a Senate vote.
Jen Colletta can be reached at [email protected].