FBI Statistics Show an Increase in Hate Crimes in 2015

The FBI released Hate Crime Statistics on Monday, November 14, 2016, for 2015. Over the years, since 1990 information related to bias-related incidents has been gathered. Each year since 1990, the data has become less limited from the only 11 states reported in 1990 to the now with the 2015 data collection being from nearly 15,000 law enforcement agencies across the United States.

The 2015 data marks the 25th-anniversary of the data collection and publishing. The 2015 date includes information about the offenses, the victims, offenders and the locations of these hate crimes. Data collected included 5,850 criminal incidents and 6885 related offenses as being motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity.

The information included 5,818 single-bias incidents, which involved 7121 victims. These figures are up approximately 6% from 2014 when 356 fewer incidents and 440 fewer victims were reported. Nearly 60% of the victims were targeted by race, ethnicity, or ancestry bias, almost 20% due to religious bias, and close to 18% because of the offenders’ sexual orientation bias. Gender identity accounted for less than 2%, gender for less than .5%, while disabilities accounted for just over 1%. Thirty-two multiple-bias hate crimes were reported which involved 52 victims.

*Percentage breakdowns do not add up to 100% due to rounding.

The offenses included 41.3% intimidation, 37.8% simple assault, and 19.7% aggravated assault. There were eighteen murders and thirteen rapes reported to be hate-related. There were 2.338 hate-related property crimes, 72.6% of these include destruction, damage, and vandalism. Robbery, burglary, larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and other crimes account for the remaining 27.4% of property crimes.

Most of these crimes  (31.5%) occurred near homes, 17.4% on highways/roads/streets/sidewalks, 8.3% at schools or colleges, 5.6% at parking lots or garages, and 4.4% at places of worship. The location for 11% was unknown and the remaining incidents took place at multiple other locations.

The FBI also learned that of the offenders, 48.4% were White, 24.3% were Black/African American, 9.1% were of a group of multiple races,  2% were Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander and 16.2% is unknown. “Of the 3,421 known offenders for whom ethnicity was reported, 25.7 percent were not Hispanic or Latino, 6.1 percent were Hispanic or Latino, and 1.6 percent were in a group of multiple ethnicities,” FBI officials said in the release.  “Ethnicity was unknown for 66.6 percent of these offenders.” Nearly 85% of the offenders whom age was known were 18 years old or older.

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