FBI stats: Racial hate crimes up, antigay reports level

Dear Friends:

The latest crime statistics for the U.S. were released today by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, showing a drop in 2003 of reported total hate crimes from 2001, but a slight increase from the 2002 figures.

The FBI recorded a total of 9,726 hate crimes in 2001, with 7,462 bias cases in 2002 and 7,489 reported hate crimes for 2003.

Broken down by percentage, reported hate crimes with a sexual orientation bias are up in the latest report from 2001 when the figure was 14.3 percent, but basically unchanged from 16.7 percent in 2002 to 16.6 percent for 2003.

Reported racially motivated hate crimes increased from 44.9 percent in 2001 up to 51.4 percent for 2003.

Excerpts from FBI press releases about these reported bias crimes are below, along with links to the full announcements.
^^^


http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel02/cius2001.htm

2002

Hate crime data were provided by 11,987 law enforcement agencies. The 9,726 hate crime incidents reported in 2001 involved 11,447 separate offenses, 12,016 victims, and 9,231 known offenders.

Of all reported single-bias incidents, 44.9 percent were motivated by racial bias, 21.6 percent were motivated by an ethnicity or national origin bias, 18.8 percent were based on a religious bias, 14.3 percent were based on a sexual-orientation bias, and 0.3 percent were based on a disability bias.

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http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel03/ucr2002.htm

2003

A total of 12,073 law enforcement agencies contributed hate crime data to the UCR Program in 2002. Of these agencies, 1,868 agencies (15.5 percent) submitted 7,462 hate crime incident reports that involved 8,832 separate offenses, 9,222 victims, and 7,314 known offenders.

Of the total number of single-bias crime incidents reported in 2002, 48.8 percent were motivated by racial bias, 19.1 percent were driven by religious bias, 16.7 percent were motivated by sexual-orientation bias, 14.8 percent resulted from an ethnicity/national origin bias, and 0.6 percent were motivated by disability bias.

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http://www.fbi.gov/pressrel/pressrel04/crimestat102504.htm

2004

In 2003, 11,909 agencies actively participated in the hate crime portion of the UCR Program, and 1,967 of those agencies reported 7,489 hate crime incidents involving 8,715 separate offenses, 9,100 victims, and 6,934 known offenders.

More than half (51.4 percent) of all single-bias hate crime incidents in 2003 were racially motivated. Law enforcement investigators attributed nearly 18 percent (17.9) of hate crimes to a religious bias, 16.6 percent to a sexual-orientation bias, 13.7 percent to a bias based on ethnicity/national origin, and 0.4 percent to a disability bias.