This assignment will discuss various reasons why law enforcement does not report hate crimes in their jurisdiction. This assignment will also discuss why victims of hate crimes, such as assaults, do not report their victimization to law enforcement. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an Original Essay One of the many reasons why law enforcement may not report hate crimes in their jurisdiction may be because there are some states that do not have hate crime laws. According to the NAACP and the Human Rights Campaign, as of 2015, there are five states that don't even have hate crime laws. Arkansas, Georgia, Indiana, South Carolina and Wyoming lack the tools needed to classify an act as a hate crime. An example of this dilemma became clearly evident in the 2015 shooting in Charleston, South Carolina, which occurred at the historically black Emanuel AME Church. It took a day for officials to finally announce that the killings would be investigated as hate crimes. Killer Dylan Roof was prosecuted at the federal level, but since then no progress has been made in protecting potential victims. Instead, many officials are stigmatized that the legislation would have a negative effect on freedom of opinion and speech. While many other states have hate crime laws and guidelines, they vary greatly from state to state. An act may be classified as a hate crime in one state, but in another the victim may not fall under the list of protected classes. Large variations in the inclusion of sexual orientation and gender could be attributed in part to why these types of crimes go unreported. Even if a clear law were adopted, the lack of training for law enforcement could never be reported. It stands to reason that if an officer doesn't know how to handle a potential hate crime, they can't identify, investigate, or report it. Part of the problem that comes with understanding the law is that it can be written ambiguously, which allows discretion in how the agency can enforce the law. “Ambiguity results when policy makers create abstract rules designed to cover a wide range of circumstances. These rules create a framework for enforcement agencies, but do not dictate specific enforcement actions. Many laws, but especially civil rights laws, contain ambiguous and indeterminate implications about what organizations should do in operationalizing abstract statutes in order to make them enforceable. and hate crime training courses due to limited budgets. Although the Uniform Federal Crime Reporting Act of 1988 requires all federal departments and agencies to participate in crime reporting, the FBI has identified at least 120 non-reporting agencies. Part of the reason law enforcement doesn't report may simply be because they don't have the digital access and ability to enter the information they collect into the database. It is very likely that part of the problem lies with the federal government which needs to improve the system of tracking and reporting these criminal kids.