Characteristics and Targets of Mass Casualty Hate Crime Offenders

Drawn from a first-of-its-kind database (the Bias Incidents and Actors Study [BIAS]) on nearly 1,000 violent and nonviolent hate crime offenders in the United States, this research brief examines mass casualty hate crime offenders. Among violent hate crime o­ffenders, those with the highest public profiles are individuals who commit, or intend to commit, mass casualty attacks. In BIAS, we identify a “mass casualty” off­ender as an individual who perpetrated, or attempted to perpetrate, an attack with the intention of killing or injuring four or more people. BIAS data show that the situational characteristics of mass casualty attacks, as well as the pro‑files of the perpetrators themselves, diff­er from other violent hate crimes in important ways.

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