iNDICA NEWS BUREAU-
The FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program released on Monday a 2021 hate crime statistics supplement about bias-motivated incidents throughout the nation.
For the 2021 data year, the UCR Program accepted Summary Reporting System (SRS) hate crime data submissions and additional National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) hate crime reports from 3,025 agencies that covered a combined population of 87,239,467 to help compile this special report.
The supplemental data was combined with that submitted via NIBRS, which has been converted to the SRS format.
This supplement allows for a more complete representation of reported hate crimes in the US for 2021. Nationally, reported hate crime incidents increased 11.6% from 8,120 in 2020 to 9,065 in 2021.
The updated dataset for 2021 includes all law enforcement agency hate crime incident reporting regardless of the number of months or quarters.
While the NIBRS 2021 hate crime dataset reported 7,262 incidents and 8,673 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity, the supplemental hate crime dataset reports involve 10,840 incidents and 12,411 related offenses.
The supplemental reporting figure is higher as it represents a larger population as more agencies were able to submit via the SRS system. (Due to rounding, percentage breakdowns may not add up to 100 percent.)
Victims of Hate Crime Incidents
Over 10,500 single-bias incidents involved 12,411 victims.
A percent distribution of victims by bias type shows that
- 64.5% of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ race/ethnicity/ancestry bias,
- 15.9% were targeted because of the offenders’ sexual-orientation bias,
- 14.1% were targeted because of the offenders’ religious bias,
- 3.2% were targeted because of the offenders’ gender identity bias,
- 1.4% were targeted because of the offenders’ disability bias, and
- 1.0% were targeted because of the offenders’ gender bias.
There were 310 multiple-bias hate crime incidents that involved 411 victims.
Offenses by Crime Category
- Of the 8,327 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in the updated 2021 dataset,
- 43.2% were intimidation,
- 35.5% were simple assault, and
- 20.1% were aggravated assault.
- 19 rapes and 18 murders were reported as hate crimes.
- The remaining 70 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons were reported in the category of other.
Of the 3,817 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against property, 71.2% were acts of destruction/damage/vandalism.
267 additional offenses were classified as crimes against society. This crime category represents society’s prohibition against engaging in certain types of activity such as gambling, prostitution, and drug violations. These are typically victimless crimes in which property is not the object.
“We applaud the federal government’s efforts to correct their 2021 hate crime statistics report making that information available as quickly as they could,” said Sim J Singh Attariwala, Senior Policy and Advocacy Manager of the Sikh Coalition. “The Sikh Coalition continues to demand that all law enforcement agencies be required to provide accurate data to help drive policy forward — we cannot combat hate if we do not have an accurate picture of the problem.”
According to The Sikh Coalition, the number of anti-Sikh hate crime incidents in the updated report still shows an increase by more than double (108%) from 2020 to 2021. It said the update for 2021 did result in changes from the original report reflecting 185 anti-Sikh incidents, while the original figure was 214. “Despite the decrease, it does not change the fact that anti-Sikh hate crimes for 2021 are the highest they have ever been and remain the second highest classification of religiously motivated hate crimes after anti-Jewish incidents. Anti-Islamic hate crimes were among the third most frequent religiously-motivated hate crimes and experienced a 38% increase from 2020 to 2021. The updated data also confirms our previously held concerns that political rhetoric and xenophobic policies have an impact on the safety of communities — Anti-Asian hate crime incidents showing an increase of 167% and Anti-Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander hate crime incidents showing a 187% increase from 2020 to 2021.”
The Sikh Coalition added that the high figures and trends “are alarming and demonstrate that more must be done to combat hate.” It said, “The Sikh Coalition will continue to advocate for policies and reforms aimed to combat hate crimes, bias incidents, and white supremacist violence.”
