New York City’s current Hate Violence Prevention strategy has been a failure. In 2017, 325 hate crimes were reported to the NYPD; in 2019 there were 420; in 2021 there were 565, and in Q1 of 2022, complaints were up 75%. We are over four years into the city’s hate violence crisis and the numbers continue to climb.

The city’s response to date has centered almost exclusively on law enforcement, with millions spent to staff the NYPD’s Hate Crimes Task Forces. But the NYPD has proven itself unable to reverse the upward trajectory in identity-based violence, and over the last five years there have been a total of only 87 hate crimes convictions in New York City.

This is because policing and prosecution have been the wrong strategies from the beginning. Research shows that hate crimes laws have no deterrent effect, and many of the communities targeted by hate violence are also the least likely to report to the police. Hate crimes arrests are by definition post-hoc, not a prevention strategy, and impossible to scale to the size of the problem.

If we are serious about preventing violence, it’s past time for a new approach.

An effective hate violence prevention strategy must begin within the communities that are being targeted, and resource community-based organizations to empower vulnerable New Yorkers and address the factors that lead to bias incidents.

This approach emphasizes culturally competent and socially responsive diversity education for all ages; building robust, active ties between communities to cultivate shared interests and responsibility; bystander intervention training; community-based reporting of hate violence incidents; and community care, including community-led transformative justice processes as well as counseling and peer support services for survivors of violence.