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General Laws of Massachusetts - Chapter 22C the Department of State Police. - Section 1 Definitions

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Section 32. For the purposes of sections thirty-three to thirty-five, inclusive, the following words shall have the following meanings:—

“Crime reporting unit”, a joint project of the department of state police and the criminal history systems board charged with the responsibility of collecting incident reports submitted by state, local and campus police departments and other law enforcement authorities and disseminating periodic reports analyzing and interpreting crime rates and trends in the commonwealth.

“Hate crime”, any criminal act coupled with overt actions motivated by bigotry and bias including, but not limited to, a threatened, attempted or completed overt act motivated at least in part by racial, religious, ethnic, handicap, gender or sexual orientation prejudice, or which otherwise deprives another person of his constitutional rights by threats, intimidation or coercion, or which seek to interfere with or disrupt a person’s exercise of constitutional rights through harassment or intimidation. Hate crime shall also include, but not be limited to, acts that constitute violations of sections thirty-seven and thirty-nine of chapter two hundred and sixty-five, section one hundred and twenty-seven A of chapter two hundred and sixty-six and chapter two hundred and seventy-two.

“Hate crime data”, information, incident reports, records and statistics relating to hate crimes, collected by the crime reporting unit.

“Incident report”, an account of occurrence of a hate crime received or collected by the crime reporting unit.

Last modified: March 17, 2010