FBI - Just in the past month, three men were indicted in New Mexico for assaulting a disabled Navajo man one individual was sentenced for putting a hangman’s noose on the house of a Honduran immigrant in Louisiana; and another man was sentenced for burning a predominately African-American church in Massachusetts. All three of these incidents were investigated by the FBI as federal hate crimes, the number one priority of our civil rights program. Another FBI priority is the annual collection and public reporting of hate crimes…in order to help the nation get a more accurate accounting of the problem.
Today, we’re releasing here on our website the latest figures on bias-motivated crimes in our Hate Crime Statistics, 2009 report.
While the number of law enforcement agencies submitting data to us increased—topping off at 14,222—the number of hate crime incidents reported for 2009 (6,604) was down from 2008. The number of reported victims (8,336) has also gone down. (“Victims,” in this case, can be individuals, businesses, institutions, and society as a whole.)
Some of the general findings include:
Victims
- 61.1 percent of all hate crimes were committed against persons, while 38.1 percent were crimes against property.
- Of the 4,057 victims of racial bias, 71.5 percent were victims because of an offender’s prejudice against blacks.
- Of the 1,575 victims of anti-religious hate crimes, 71.9 percent were victims because of an offender’s anti-Jewish bias.
Offenders
- Of the 6,225 known offenders, 62.4 percent were white, 18.5 percent were black, and 7.3 percent were groups of individuals of various races. The race was unknown for 10.2 percent of offenders, and other races accounted for the remaining offenders.
- Of the 5,136 offenders who carried out crimes against persons, 40.3 percent committed simple assaults, 34.6 percent intimidated their victims, and 23.5 percent committed aggravated assaults. Murders and rapes were committed by 1.2 percent of the offenders.
Crime locations
- 31.3 percent of hate crime incidents—whether motivated by racial, religious, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or disability bias—happened in or near victims’ homes.
- 17.2 percent took place on highways, roads, alleys, or streets.
Read the entire report for more details on victims, offenders, and crime locations, as well as state aggregate totals and individual agency breakdowns of bias-motivated crimes submitted to the FBI.
Update on last year’s new hate crime legislation: The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crime Prevention Act adds two new categories to our list of biases—actual or perceived gender and gender identity. Our Uniform Crime Reporting Program staff continues to work toward expanding its training for state and local law enforcement on reporting these new categories of biases, and then on incorporating them into our future publications.
In addition to releasing hate crime statistics yearly, the FBI remains committed to protecting individual civil rights and investigating hate crimes. Special Agent Cynthia Deitle, who heads up our civil rights program in Washington, D.C., says, “During 2010, the FBI devoted additional resources to combat hate crime in those cities most at risk for bias-motivated violence. Working in collaboration with state and local law enforcement agencies, as well as our non-governmental partners, we are confident we can mitigate the risks and impact hate crimes have on individuals and communities.”
