State commission urges permanent hate-data infrastructure and law-enforcement training

Professor Brian Levin, chair of the California Commission on the State of Hate, told the Select Committee that survey and victimization research point to far more incidents than law-enforcement reports capture and urged the Legislature to build a permanent data infrastructure and training mandates.

“What is measured matters,” Levin said, summarizing the commission’s stance that better data will produce evidence-based recommendations. He described estimates that millions of Californians experienced at least one act of hate within a year and said roughly 650,000 experienced potentially criminal incidents in survey-based victimization research.

Levin outlined policy recommendations that the commission is advancing to prevent and reduce hate: creating a permanent statewide system to collect privacy-sensitive incident and victimization data, requiring ongoing hate-crimes training for officers outside initial academy training, funding community-based victim services, and expanding statutory provisions to enable secure data sharing between state agencies and the commission for research and prevention planning.

Levin also emphasized online radicalization and the role of high-transmission social-media accounts in spreading stereotypes and threats, recommending research access and regulatory or cost-based incentives to improve platform moderation and transparency.