The present proposal is for a three-phase project aimed at improving police and community stakeholder response to hate crimes

The International Center for the Study of Violent Extremism (ICSVE) will deliver training and resources to address hate crimes through a $400,000 project grant from the Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Assistance. The grant was awarded on October 1, 2022 under the Community-Based Approaches to Advancing Justice program (CFDA 16.047).

Over a three-year period concluding September 30, 2025, ICSVE will train law enforcement, community stakeholders, and victim services professionals to improve identification and response to hate crimes and individuals at risk of radicalization. Training activities will include developing an early intervention system guide, multimedia resources featuring former hate group members, and data-driven reports on lessons learned. ICSVE will assess the efficacy of these trainings through quantitative and qualitative data collection from participants and community members. The project aims to build trust between police and communities to more effectively address hate crimes through trauma-informed victim services, suspect interviews, and a coordinated response network.

After convening and conferring with a collaborative working group of police and community activists, through a series of nationwide virtual trainings, multimedia resource guides, and written, data-based reports, the international center for the study of violent extremism, alongside experts from POLICE2PEACE will first train police and sheriff's deputies to build trust among their communities as "peace officers" as they work toward building an early warning and intervention system within their jurisdiction. Icsve will then train frontline stakeholders, including probation officers and social workers in addition to police and sheriff's deputies, to identify and intervene with people who are at risk for radicalization or have already adopted hateful ideologies but have not yet engaged in violence. The final phase will be for icsve to train investigators and victims' services professionals to interact with victims of hate crimes in a trauma-informed manner, to investigate hate crimes effectively and efficiently, and to interact with hate crime suspects in a way which gleans the most accurate information not only about the crime itself but also about the broader network of individuals supportive of violence-justifying hateful ideologies. Throughout the project, and more intensely during the final two quarters of the project, icsve will collect data both from training participants as well as community members who may have interacted with training participants in order to empirically assess through quantitative and qualitative methods the efficacy of the trainings. Deliverables include a short training manual on how to construct an early warning and intervention system for police addressing violent extremism in their communities, a multimedia resource guide featuring former members of hate groups and hate crime offenders speaking about their experiences, a widely accessible final report detailing lessons learned and best practices moving forward, and a scholarly article aimed at informing researchers, policymakers, and practitioners regarding the findings from the project.