American Notes CRIME

With more and more offenses committed each year by the Ku Klux Klan, skinhead toughs, neo-Nazis and various other hate groups, civil rights advocates were heartened last week when President Bush signed a law authorizing the Justice Department to keep track of crimes motivated by racial, religious or sexual prejudice.

But the Hate Crimes Statistics Act is already caught up in the Government's financial squeeze. The FBI complains that budget cutbacks will force it to fire 147 staff members from its records division. The dismissals will make it more difficult to compile the bureau's annual Uniform Crime Reports (which list serious offenses such as murder, rape and robbery) and still keep tabs on hate crimes. New York Democratic Congressman Charles Schumer, who sponsored the bill in the House, is worried that the cutbacks will turn the measure into "little more than an empty gesture." Says an FBI spokesman: "It'll get done, one way or another."