The FBI released Hate Crime Statistics 2016, its latest annual compilation of bias-motivated incidents reported throughout the U.S.
The newest report, which provides information about the offenses, victims, offenders, and locations of hate crimes, reveals that for 2016, law enforcement agencies reported 6,121 criminal incidents that were motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, or gender identity.
As part of the 2016 report, participants in UCR’s Hate Crime Statistics Program included 15,254 law enforcement agencies. These agencies provided from one to 12 months’ worth of data about bias-motivated crime, and of those agencies, 1,776 reported one or more incidents. The remaining agencies reported no hate crimes occurred within their jurisdictions.
Of the 6,121 criminal incidents reported, 6,063 were single-bias incidents (there were also 58 multiple-bias incidents). Of the single-bias incidents:
– 57.5 percent were motivated by a race, ethnicity or ancestry bias;
– 21.0 percent were motivated by a religious bias;
– 17.7 percent were motivated by a sexual orientation bias;
– The remaining incidents were motivated by a gender identity, disability, or gender bias.
Where were these crimes committed? The two largest percentages of hate crime incidents took place in or near residences (27.3 percent) and on or near some type of roadway (18.4 percent). The remaining incidents were perpetrated at a variety of other locations, including schools and houses of worship, commercial and government buildings, restaurants and nightclubs, parking lots and garages, playgrounds and parks, and even medical facilities.
In short, hate crimes can and do happen just about anywhere.
What about the victims of these crimes? Hate crime victims can be individuals, businesses, government entities, religious organizations, or society as whole, and they can be committed against persons, property, or society. In 2016, law enforcement reported a total of 7,615 victims of hate crimes.
Of the 7,615 overall victims, 4,720 were victims of crimes against persons (both adults and juveniles), 2,813 were victims of crimes against property, and 82 were victims of hate crimes categorized as crimes against society (e.g., weapons violations, drug offenses, gambling).
Full report: Hate Crime Statistics, 2016
Data Tables
This file includes Microsoft Excel files for the Participation Table and Tables 1 through 14. It was compressed with WinZip software.
Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, Tables (file size 1.8MB)
Narrative Portions
This file contains the Adobe Portable Document Format (i.e., PDF) files of the narrative portions of the topic pages, resource pages, and data declarations. It was compressed with WinZip software.
Hate Crime Statistics, 2016, Narrative Files (file size 2.4MB)
