Hot Spots of Hate and Violence: US County Level Analysis of Factors Related to Hate Crimes and Terrorism

The project is an effort to exploit existing quantitative data in innovative ways to identify factors that make certain counties prone to radicalization and political or hate-inspired violence.  The project is particularly interested in testing multiple hypotheses concerning the association between hate crime and terrorism. It will test different channels for a potential link between hate crimes and terrorism, which may allow the homeland security and national security communities to explicitly identify hate crimes as an indicator of radicalization that may predict subsequent, more violent terrorist activity. Likewise, the project will assess whether hate crimes are committed in response to terrorist acts, which could aid local law enforcement in the wake of a terrorist attack. More importantly, it will create a model that identifies causal factors related to the outbreak of violent radicalized activity in the United States at the county level of analysis, a level of analysis that is focused enough that it can be useful from a policy perspective not just for the federal level of the security communities but also at the level of state offices of homeland security.

The National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism have published their findings here: http://www.start.umd.edu/sites/default/files/files/publications/START_AnalysisofFactorsRelatedtoHateCrimeandTerrorism.pdf