Laramie Research

 http://www.adl.org/ADL_Opinions/Civil_Rights/20091101-Oped.htm

"Hate crimes affect the stability and security of our communities. Whenever a bias-motivated crime is committed, the victim's entire community is left feeling victimized, vulnerable, fearful, isolated, and unprotected by the law. Such crimes can also lead to reprisals and a dangerous spiral of escalating inter-group tension and violence. Thus, the impact of the crime is far greater than the already terrible impact on the individual."


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime_laws_in_the_United_States 

These websites clarify the importance of laws against hate crimes. It details the things the police are now allowed to do in order to search under hate crime suspicions. The wikipedia site is very useful because it gives us a graph chart on how many crime cases there were per year having to do with hate crimes. It also has description of various types of hate crimes. The only information it doesn't give is why it took 11 years since the Matthew Shepard case to pass the legislation. I can't seem to find that source anywhere, no matter how many times I google it I can only find people talking about how important it is or how it was passed in 2009 by Barack Obama.