All About Us

 

Problem

The U.S. Bureau of Justice projects that only 40 percent of hate crime victimizations were reported to the police in 2012. Therefore we can see there is a trend in under reporting of hate crimes in the United States. Underreporting of hate crimes has a multitude of causes (including but not limited to): lack of a universal definition of hate crimes, lack of trust in law enforcement, costs associated with legal fees, lack of information on the reporting process, differing procedures of law enforcement, and lack of official protocol. Thus we were tasked with finding a solution to increase the navigability of hate crime reporting, and ultimately increase the amount of hate crimes reported.

 

Problem Sponsor

 

Our problem sponsor is PeaceTech Lab, which is a subsidiary of the US Institute of Peace. PeaceTech Lab is an independent non profit that brings together a variety innovators to build peace solutions.PeaceTech Lab’s Mission is to work to reduce violent conflict using technology, media, and data to accelerate and scale peacebuilding efforts.

 

Overview of Research

 

Over the course of the semester, we have interviewed people and organizations. These interviews were instrumental in helping us to understand the deficiencies in the hate crime reporting process. Our interviews came from a variety of occupations including law enforcement, university officials, nurses, non-profits, and many more. Additionally we utilized a variety of academic sources to substantiate the claims made by those we interviewed. For example, we realized that law enforcement officials in Virginia are trained to collect/investigate all crimes for indicators of a hate crime. However, once the evidence is given to the magistrate only the evidence that falls under what Virginia law defines as a hate crime can be used towards the charging of the crime.

 

Major Pivots in Project

 

We have had two major pivots in the development of our project. The first major pivot was trying to find a solution that PeaceTech would desire. Upon first hearing our problem, we as a group immediately thought of crafting legislation to improve the hate crime reporting process. However, legislation is not a task that can be accomplished in the course of a semester and was not something that PeaceTech wanted. They wanted a tangible product that had a media, data, and technology focus.

Our next idea was to create a flowchart of questions to be given to law enforcement/third parties to ensure that crimes are being properly categorized. However we ultimately decided on the creation of an app that would provide educational resources to describe the hate crime reporting process to victims, while also having a mechanism where they can report the hate crime through the app.

 

Our second major pivot was in the context of the scope of our solution. Originally we anticipated that our solution would have to improve the hate crime reporting process for the entire nation. We then realized that our scope needed to be refined to ensure that we could actually have a viable product by the end of the semester. We ultimately decided to have a regional focus of the Shenandoah Valley, so that we could provide an accurate list of resources to victims of hate crimes while also only needing to understand Virginia law to describe the legal process.

Final MVP

 

We have created an app concept that will help the designers of PeaceTech to create an app that would work to increase official hate crime reporting. Here is an example of what our app would do. Our app will be an avenue to increase the reporting of hate crimes that will be used to benefit victims of hate crimes. So for example if a hate crime was committed against Pechta. Pechta can put in her demographic information and her city, state. Then she can click the category of the crime (assault, vandalism, etc). After that she can in the text box describe the crime that happened. The app will then use the lexicon database to look at words in the description, and would state “based on the description of what happened to you matches terms that our database indicates could be related to a hate crime.” Then the location would be used to state the resources and the legal procedure in their area. Additionally the person could print out a copy of their report to bring to the police if they wanted to proceed.

 

Value of Interdisciplinary Team

 

Our team was able to benefit from the incorporation of all of our disciplines. As a team we greatly benefited from Myle’s experience as an engineering major to focus on how you design a product for a client. Through Pechta, Terrence, and Cecilia’s experience in International Affairs we were able to understand how various groups would be impacted by hate crimes. Finally Cole and John’s understanding of organizational communication, we were able to understand how to change the culture of an organization to have them account for hate crimes in the categorization of crimes.


Take the journey with us as we learn, discover and develop a solution to the problem that PeaceTech Labs has tasked us with. How to improve the reporting of hate crimes in the United States. The following timeline and blog posts chronicle our journey from the earliest ideas to the latest developments.



Hate crime. edu by pechtasok


Strawberry Jam by Terrence Fagan