NCJRS - National Criminal Justice Reference Service

Each year through its Uniform Crime Reports program, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) compiles data from hate crime reports submitted by law enforcement agencies throughout the Nation. Agencies that participated in the Hate Crime program in 2007 represented over 260 million inhabitants, or 86.3% of the Nation’s population, and their jurisdictions covered 49 states and the District of Columbia. As reported in Hate Crime Statistics 2007:
- 7,624 criminal incidents involving 9,006 offenses were reported in 2007 as a result of bias toward a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or physical or mental disability.
- Of the 7,621 single-bias incidents, 50.8 percent were motivated by a racial bias, 18.4 percent were motivated by a religious bias, 16.6 percent were motivated by a sexual-orientation bias, and 13.2 percent were motivated by an ethnicity/national origin bias. One percent involved a bias against a disability.
- There were 5,408 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in 2007. Intimidation accounted for 47.4 percent of crimes against persons, simple assaults for 31.1 percent, and aggravated assaults for 20.6 percent. Nine murders were reported as hate crimes.
- There were 3,579 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against property; most of these (81.4 percent) were acts of destruction/damage/vandalism. The remaining 18.6 percent of crimes against property consisted of robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and other offenses.
According to the 2001 National Survey of Prosecutors, which surveyed 2,341 chief prosecutors in the United States that handled felony cases in State courts of general jurisdiction, 20.2 percent of the offices prosecuted felony hate crime cases in 2001 (Prosecutors in State Courts, 2001, Bureau of Justice Statistics, 2002).
In 1999, 3,396 law enforcement agencies in 17 States (compared to 1,878 agencies in 10 States in 1997) submitted data to the FBI's National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which compiles crime data that provides more detailed information on specific crime events. The Bureau of Justice Statistics publication, Hate Crimes Reported in NIBRS, 1997-99 (2001), presents data from NIBRS to describe hate crimes reported to law enforcement in NIBRS-participating jurisdictions during the three year period and analyzes NIBRS hate crime incidents, including information on the type of bias motivation, the offenses committed during these incidents, the presence and use of weapons, and the location and the time of day of these crimes. Findings from the report include:
- "Sixty-one percent of hate crime incidents were motivated by race, 14 percent by religion, 13 percent by sexual orientation, 11 percent by ethnicity, and 1 percent by victim disability."
- "Racially and ethnically motivated incidents were the most likely to be violent. Overall, 66% of race-related incidents and 69% of ethnic-related incidents involved a violent crime. In a quarter of racial or ethnically motivated incidents, intimidation was the most serious offense."
- "Younger offenders were responsible for most hate crimes. Thirty-one percent of violent offenders and 46 percent of property offenders were under age 18."

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