Killings of homeless people have risen to their highest level in a decade, with 43 people killed last year and many more injured in often brutal attacks that are raising concern among law enforcement officials, rights advocates and politicians, according to new data due to be released this week.
The rise in killings, from 27 in 2008, comes as many state and local governments are wrestling with the problem of what to do with the growing number of people forced onto the streets by economic woes. Some states and cities are moving to prosecute violence against the homeless as hate crimes, while others have taken a different tack by imposing tougher measures to prevent people from living on the streets in the first place.
Cases compiled and analyzed by the National Coalition for the Homeless, an advocacy group based in Washington, showed homeless people doused with gasoline and set on fire, attacked with bottles, metal pipes and baseball bats, and sprayed with pepper spray, often for the sport of it.
Because the FBI does not track crimes against the homeless as part of its routine crime reporting, the data from the coalition is considered the most definitive study of the problem. A bill pending in Congress from Senator Benjamin Cardin would require the FBI to begin tracking data against the homeless.
Criminologists and others who worked on the study said they believed the rise in fatal attacks has been fueled by a combination of combustible factors. Among them are tough economic times, the popularity of amateur Web videos on “bum fights” and online games that glorify and trivialize attacks, an increase in gang initiations involving the homeless, and municipal crackdowns on homeless encampments that have bred hostility.
The data on deadly attacks against the homeless runs counter to national trends in other areas of crime. The FBI reported in May that violent crime nationwide declined 5.5 percent last year from the year before. The data from the homeless coalition found that fatal attacks on the homeless rose 59 percent in that same time span, to 43.
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