Hate crimes against LGBTQ and Latine immigrant individuals remain a serious yet under-addressed issue in the U.S.—especially for transgender women of color, who face disproportionate violence. Although the LGBTQ-rights movement has made major legal and societal progress, including marriage equality and anti-discrimination rulings, these advances overshadow deeper challenges: widespread underreporting of anti-LGBTQ hate crimes leading to faulty official data and ineffective protections, and persistent bias within the criminal justice system.

To confront this, Florida International University partnered with the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office, the Miami-Dade Police Department, and LGBTQ advocacy group SAVE. Backed by a grant from the National Institute of Justice, the team launched a groundbreaking project focused on Miami’s Latine LGBTQ community. Our speaker will share the resultant product: a clear set of findings and recommendations that offer a national model for reform to help police, victim advocates, and prosecutors better identify, investigate, respond to hate crimes, and better assist these victims to ensure justice.

Eligible for 1.5 Hours of Elimination of Bias MCLE Credit in CA.

Speaker

Dr. Besiki Luka Kutateladze is a professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice and co-founder of the Prosecutorial Performance Indicators (PPIs) project. A leading scholar on prosecutorial discretion, racial justice, performance metrics, and hate crime prosecution, his work appears in top journals and has been cited by major media outlets including The New York Times and The Washington Post. He has secured over $21 million in research funding and has been recognized with multiple awards for excellence in research. Before joining FIU, he held senior research roles at the Vera Institute of Justice and CUNY’s Institute for State and Local Governance.