Strange to believe it now but there didn't used to be "hate crimes." That's because in the past 20 years, violence against minorities has been transformed from an age-old problem into a crime that receives urgent attention, say two UC Davis and UC Irvine sociologists in their new book, "Making Hate a Crime."

"Although it remains an open question whether America is actually experiencing greater levels of hate-motivated conduct than it has in the past," say Ryken Grattet of UC Davis and Valerie Jenness of UC Irvine, "it is clear that the ascendancy of hate crime as a concept in policy discourse has focused attention on the behavior in a new way."

The two scholars trace the emergence of an anti-hate-crime movement in the 1980s, and how those involved invented and promoted the concept of hate-motivated violence.

Over time, judges have fixed more elaborate and complicated meanings to the law produced by legislators.

The authors note that law enforcement officials have inconsistently applied the court's abstract principles to concrete factual circumstances.

This inconsistency seems to be similar to the prosecution of other kinds of crime, according Grattet and Jenness. The little data available suggest that many incidents reported are never prosecuted as hate crime--not unlike other types of crimes that are not prosecuted to the full extent.

However, as the country continues to standardize its law enforcement training on the subject, the authors argue that the policing and prosecution of hate crime will likely become more uniform across jurisdictions.