FBI says number of hate crimes holding steady

The number of hate crimes in the U.S. in 2010 increased slightly over 2009, according to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation today. The number of incidents defined as hate crimes in 2010 totaled 6,628, an increase from 6,604 in 2009.

The FBI press release announcing the report states: “Intimidation…vandalism…assault…rape…murder. These are crimes by anyone’s definition. But add an element of bias against the victims—because of their race or religion, for example—and these traditional crimes become hate crimes.”

The FBI report shows that 65 out of 505 law enforcement agencies (.xls) in Florida (covering a population of more than 18.7 million people) reported 136 hate crime incidents in 2010.

The report numbers indicate:

• In 2010, 1,949 law enforcement agencies reported 6,628 hate crime incidents involving 7,699 offenses.
• There were 6,624 single-bias incidents that involved 7,690 offenses, 8,199 victims, and 6,001 offenders.
• The 4 multiple-bias incidents reported in 2010 involved 9 offenses, 9 victims, and 7 offenders.

Of the 7,690 single bias hate crimes, data shows that hate crimes motivated by race had the highest number of cases followed by sexual orientation, religion and ethnicity/national origin.

Over 62 percent of the total number of hate crimes were directed against persons, and the offenses included intimidation, simple assault, aggravated assault, murder, nonnegligent manslaughters and forcible rapes.

Over 48 percent of these crimes stemmed from racial bias, over 19 percent were “motivated by sexual-orientation bias,” over 18 “resulted from religious bias,” over 13 percent “were prompted by ethnicity/national origin bias” and “0.6 percent resulted from biases against disabilities.”

Almost 70 percent of racial bias crimes were “motivated by anti-black bias”; a little over 65 percent of the religious bias crimes were anti-jewish, and almost 58 percent of hate crimes motivated by sexual orientation bias “were classified as anti-male homosexual bias.”

Hispanics were the target of over 66 percent of the hate crimes motivated by ethnicity/national origin.

The report also indicates that almost 60 percent of 6,008 hate crime offenders were whites, followed by blacks (a little over 18 percent).