Building community capacity to report hate crimes and bias incidents in Washington state.

The Washington State Attorney General’s Office (AGO) seeks funding to increase the identification and reporting of hate crimes and bias incidents in Washington State through the Building Community Capacity to Report Hate Crimes and Bias Incidents Project. This funding will allow the AGO to partner and engage with those most affected by hate crimes and bias incidents and develop resources and tools to identify and report hate crimes and bias incidents.

In 2024 the Washington State Legislature created a statewide hate crimes and bias incidents hotline in response to communities organizing to address increased hate crimes reports. The hotline will gather comprehensive statewide data and add capacity to coordinate with historically marginalized communities most impacted by hate crimes and bias incidents. The hotline will pilot in three jurisdictions starting July 1, 2025, and statewide beginning July 1, 2027.

The state-allocated funding provides only the base funding to operate the hotline. This project will provide critical funding to partner with community-based and/or population-specific organizations representing groups most affected by hate crimes, bias incidents, violence, and victimization to ensure the new resource is informed by community, trusted by community, and is a culturally responsive, trauma-informed resource that effectively increases identification and reporting. 

Each contracted community-based organization (CBO) will collaborate with the AGO in developing a strategic plan for the hotline’s implementation and executing an outreach and engagement strategy tailored to their community's specific cultural and linguistic needs to inform and educate their community on identifying and reporting hate crimes and bias incidents. The AGO will contract with a marketing company to develop a public awareness toolkit in 16 languages with input from the partners engaged with this project. A dissemination plan will be developed for the toolkit to ensure accessibility and its use across diverse communities, local governments, law enforcement, and prosecutors.

The AGO will work with each CBO to develop metrics that are culturally responsive and appropriate to their specific population. Expected outcomes include increased awareness among excluded communities of when and how to report hate crimes and bias incidents, an increase in the number of reported hate crimes, and statewide data to inform future policy decisions.