11 Facts about Hate Crimes
- There were 7,722 hate crime incidents reported to the FBI in 2006 – an 8% increase from 2005.
- The large majority (52.2%) of the hate crimes were motivated by racial bias, followed by religious bias (17.6%) and sexual orientation bias (15.6).
- Approximately 66.2% of racial bias was anti-black, while 21.3% were anti-white.
- About 64.3% of religious bias was anti-Jewish, while 12.0% were anti-Islamic.
- Most sexual orientation bias (62%) was directed at gay men.
- Hate crime events in 2001 increased 15.5% from their level in 2000 in response to the wave of post-9/11 hate crimes targeting individuals or their property who were, or perceived to be, Middle Eastern or Muslims.
- Only 1/3 of the victims of hate crimes report the incident to law enforcement.
- The national debate over immigration has caused a sharp increase in violent hate crimes against Hispanics, regardless of their immigration status.
- According to hate crime statistics published annually by the FBI, anti-Latino hate crimes rose by almost 35% between 2003 and 2006, the latest year for which statistics are available.
- The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 was passed by Congress in the wake of an outbreak of anti-homosexual violence in the late 1980s - it was the first federal civil rights law to include sexual orientation as a class.
- Reporting under the federal hate crime act is voluntary and due to the controversial nature of collecting hate crime statistics, over one-third of police jurisdictions opt not to participate in the effort. As a result, it’s estimated that the FBI’s annual reporting of hate crime stats are off by thousands.
Sources:
FBI
National Crime Prevention Council
Esquire
Southern Poverty Law Center
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