Maryland is poised to be the first state to enact hate crime legislation protecting homeless people and their property, pending passage of legislation in the Maryland House of Delegates and signing by Governor Martin O’Malley.

On March 6, Maryland’s senate overwhelmingly passed a bill that expands protected classes of people to include homeless people among groups based on race, color, religious beliefs, sexual orientation and nation of origin.

Senator Alex Mooney (R–District 3) introduced the bill after seeing footage of a homeless person in Florida being beaten by teenagers with baseball bats, said Michael Hough, legislative aid for Mooney.

“We did some research and saw that it was a problem in more states,” Hough said. “There were even a couple cases in Maryland and Baltimore a few years ago.”

Reported incidents of attacks against homeless men and women across the country have reached their highest level in years, according to a recent report by the National Coalition for the Homeless(NCH). The report details 142 violent crimes nationwide against homeless individuals in the past year; that is the highest number of incidents since NCH’s annual study began in 1999 and represents a 65% increase from last year.

“It is NCH’s position that many of these acts should be considered hate crimes,” said Michael Stoops, the executive director of NCH, who is also a Street Sense board member. “Crimes against homeless people are motivated by the same intolerance as hate crimes against people of a certain religious, racial or ethnic background.”

Recent violence against homeless people in Maryland included three fatal beatings in 2001 of homeless men in Baltimore, according to NCH. A group of teenagers was charged in the string of homicides. In 2002, two Maryland police officers were indicted for beating and unleashing a dog on a homeless man. In 2004, a homeless man was fatally beaten after he made negative comments about another man’s girlfriend. In 2006, a police officer in Takoma Park was indicted for assaulting a homeless man detained for questioning.

And Stoops added that there have probably been more incidents, as there is a lack of data on violence against homeless people; such violence often goes unreported. Adam Schneider with Health Care for the Homeless, Inc. in Baltimore, said that he knows firsthand that there are many unreported violent attacks on homeless people, many of which could be motivated by hate.

“We come across individuals who have been attacked relatively frequently -- far more than a typical medical clinic,” Schneider said. “Life on the streets is inherently violent, and individuals who live on the streets are particularly vulnerable to attack.”

 “Our clients are victims of violence much more often than they are perpetrators. Due to an understandable distrust of the system, victims very likely underreport incidence of violence.”

Schneider added that like NCH, Health Care for the Homeless is in favor of this legislation and has been advocating for it.

If it is enacted, those found guilty of a hate crime-based attack on a homeless person, like those convicted of other violent hate crime offenses, would be subject to imprisonment for up to 10 years and/or a fine of up to $10,000. If a violation results in the death of a victim, the violator is subject to imprisonment for up to 20 years and/or a fine of up to $20,000.

Other states currently considering similar hate crime bills include Massachusetts, Florida, California, and Nevada, says Michael Stoops.

According to the FBI’s most recent report on hate crime statistics in 2005, law enforcement agencies reported that there were 8,804 victims of hate crimes nationwide that year. An analysis of data for victims of single-bias hate crime incidents showed that 55.7 percent of the victims were targeted because of a bias against a race. The next largest group of those victimized was for a bias against a religious belief, in 16% of cases, followed first by a bias against an ethnicity or nation of origin and then by a bias against a sexual orientation. No data are readily available on homeless individuals.

Overall, it is impossible to determine just how effective hate crime legislation has been as a deterrent to future hate attacks, according to Jack Levin, Northeastern University Professor and co-author of Hate Crimes Revisited.

“Actually, it is difficult to make this determination for laws in general. We know that certainty of punishment works more effectively than severity of punishment. But hate crime laws have a more symbolic importance. They direct attention of the public to offenses committed against an extremely vulnerable group of people. Hate crime laws send a message, both to would-be perpetrators and to victims -- namely, that it is not ‘cool’ to attack helpless members of society, that Americans will not tolerate hate and violence against the vulnerable.”

Levin notes that the United States leads the world in terms of passing hate crime legislation. Great Britain has patterned many of its hate laws after those of the U.S., but British legislation is focused more on the conflict between racial groups than on broader hate motivation. In Germany so-called hate laws focus more on political crimes than on hate crimes.

“On the other hand, Europeans do not have first amendment protections, so that they also tend to outlaw hate speech that does not rise to the level of crime,” Levin says. “We do not.”

This is the second time that Mooney has introduced this legislation in the Maryland Senate. The text of the bill introduced this year is virtually the same as that of the bill Mooney introduced at the end of the 2006 session that failed by one vote, said Michael Hough of Mooney’s office. What is different this time, he said, is that they submitted the bill much earlier in the session and had much more help from lobbyists and homeless advocates. For example, through NCH, Mooney showed a group of senators a taping of a 60 Minutes piece on “Bumfights” and beatings of homeless people.

“Hopefully [this bill] will bring more attention to these issues and hopefully, people won’t do this kind of crime anymore,” Hough said.

Some members of the Maryland Senate have criticized Mooney, a conservative Republican, for introducing this hate crime legislation in order to water down existing protections based on sexual preference. Hough from Mooney’s office did not comment on this criticism and said that from what he knows, Mooney introduced the legislation on the basis of the merits of the bill.

While the bill has yet to come up for a vote in the House of Delegates, both Michael Hough and Michael Stoops are hopeful about the House’s decision and said that O’Malley has indicated that he will sign the bill.

Laura Thompson Osuri contributed to this article.