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Home Hate Crime 2014 Resource Pages About Hate Crime Statistics

About Hate Crime Statistics

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Background

Congress mandates the collection of hate crime data

On April 23, 1990, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, 28 U.S.C. § 534, which required the Attorney General to collect data “about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” The Attorney General delegated the responsibilities of developing the procedures for implementing, collecting, and managing hate crime data to the Director of the FBI, who, in turn, assigned the tasks to the Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. Under the direction of the Attorney General and with the cooperation and assistance of many local and state law enforcement agencies, the UCR Program created a hate crime data collection to comply with the congressional mandate.

Collection design

The designers of the Hate Crime Statistics Program sought to capture information about the types of bias that motivate crimes, the nature of the offenses, and some information about the victims and offenders. In creating the program, the designers recognized that hate crimes are not separate, distinct crimes; instead, they are traditional offenses motivated by the offender’s bias. (For example, an offender assaults a victim because of a bias against the victim’s race.) After much consideration, the developers agreed that hate crime data could be derived by capturing the additional element of bias in those offenses already being reported to the UCR Program. Attaching the collection of hate crime statistics to the established UCR data collection procedures, they concluded, would fulfill the directives of the Hate Crime Statistics Act without placing an undue additional reporting burden on law enforcement and, in time, would develop a substantial body of data about the nature and frequency of bias crimes occurring throughout the nation.

The first hate crime publications

The UCR Program’s first publication on the subject was Hate Crime Statistics, 1990: A Resource Book, which was a compilation of hate crime data reported by 11 states that Hate Crime Statistics, 2014 had collected the information under state authority in 1990 and were willing to offer their data as a prototype. The UCR Program continued to work with agencies familiar with investigating hate crimes and collecting related information so that it could develop and implement a more uniform method of data collection on a nationwide scale. Hate Crime Statistics, 1992, presented the first published data reported by law enforcement agencies across the country that participated in the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program.

Subsequent changes to the hate crime data collection

  • In September 1994, lawmakers amended the Hate Crime Statistics Act to include bias against persons with disabilities by passing the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, Public Law 103-322. The FBI started gathering data for the additional bias type on January 1, 1997.
  • The Church Arson Prevention Act, 18 U.S.C. § 247, which was signed into law in July 1996, removed the sunset clause from the original statute and mandated that the collection of hate crime data become a permanent part of the UCR Program.
  • Congress further amended the Hate Crime Statistics Act by passing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, 18 U.S.C. §249 (Shepard/Byrd Act.) The amendment includes the collection of data for crimes motivated by bias against a particular gender and gender identity, as well as for hate crimes committed by or directed against juveniles. The FBI began collecting these data in 2013. (See the Hate Crime Statistics Act for referenced legislation, as amended.)
  • In 2012, the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program made additional system modifications to comply with the requirements established by the U.S. Government’s Office of Management and Budget (OMB) for the collection of race and ethnicity and the recommendation of the Criminal Justice Information Services (CJIS) Advisory Policy Board (APB) to allow agencies to report up to four additional bias motivations per offense type. The FBI began collecting data with these modifications in 2013.
  • In 2013, the Director of the FBI approved the CJIS APB’s recommendation to expand the bias types in the religion category to include all of those identified by the Pew Research Center and the U.S. Census Bureau. The director also approved the collection of an anti-Arab bias. Beginning in 2015, law enforcement agencies could submit the following additional religious bias types: anti-Buddhist, anti-Eastern Orthodox (Greek, Russian, etc.), anti-Hindu, anti-Jehovah’s Witness, anti-Mormon, anti-other Christian, and anti-Sikh. Furthermore, the Hate Crime Statistics Program began collecting race and ethnicity bias types under the combined category Race/Ethnicity/Ancestry, which includes the added bias type of anti-Arab. Data concerning these changes will be published beginning with Hate Crime Statistics, 2015.

Recent Developments

This section provides the updated collection criteria that participating agencies used to submit hate crime data to the UCR Program beginning in 2013. It includes information about the new and revised collection standards for gender bias, gender identity bias, the involvement of juveniles, revised sexual-orientation bias types, multiple biases per offense, revised race and ethnicity categories, and the revised rape definition.

Addition of Gender and Gender Identity Bias Categories

In response to the Shepard/Byrd Act, the FBI began accepting data on crimes motivated by gender (male and female) bias and gender identity (transgender and gender nonconforming) bias from contributors.

Involvement of Juveniles

Also in response to the Shepard/Byrd Act, the FBI modified its data collection so that reporting agencies could indicate whether hate crimes were committed by, or directed against, juveniles. Therefore, in addition to reporting the number of individual victims, law enforcement began reporting the number of victims who are 18 years of age or older and the number of victims under the age of 18.

Revision of Sexual-Orientation Bias Types

Following the passage of the Shepard/Byrd Act, the FBI updated select sexual-orientation bias types at the recommendation of the CJIS APB and with input from the Hate Crime Coalition. The sexual-orientation bias types were revised from anti-male homosexual, anti-female homosexual, anti-homosexual, anti-heterosexual, and anti-bisexual to anti-gay (male); anti-lesbian; anti-lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (mixed group); anti-heterosexual; and anti-bisexual.

Additional Bias Types per Offense

At the recommendation of the CJIS APB and with the approval of the FBI Director, the UCR Program began permitting law enforcement agencies to report four additional bias types per offense instead of one.

Revision of Race and Ethnicity Categories

To comply with a directive from the OMB, the UCR Program expanded its race categories and changed its ethnicity categories. The race categories were expanded from four (White, Black, American Indian or Alaskan Native, and Asian or Other Pacific Islander) to five (White, Black or African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Asian, and Native Hawaiian or Other Pacific Islander). The ethnicity categories changed from “Hispanic” and “Other Ethnicity/National Origin” to “Hispanic or Latino” and “Not Hispanic or Latino.”

Revision to the Definition of Rape

At the recommendation of the CJIS APB and with the approval of the FBI Director, the UCR Program initiated the collection of rape data under a revised definition and removed the term “forcible” from the offense name in 2013. The changes bring uniformity to the offense in both the Summary Reporting System (SRS) and the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS) by capturing data (1) without regard to gender, (2) including penetration of any bodily orifice by any object or body part, and (3) including offenses where physical force is not involved. Beginning in 2013, the UCR Program defined rape as follows:

Rape (revised definition): Penetration, no matter how slight, of the vagina or anus with any body part or object, or oral penetration by a sex organ of another person, without the consent of the victim. (This includes the offenses of rape, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object as converted from data submitted via the NIBRS.)

Rape (legacy definition): The carnal knowledge of a female forcibly and against her will.

The offenses of fondling, incest, and statutory rape are included in the crimes against
persons, other category.

From the NIBRS

For all law enforcement agencies that submitted their hate crime data via the NIBRS in 2014, the UCR Program combined the agencies’ totals for the offenses of rape (which includes both male and female victims), sodomy, and sexual assault with an object to derive rape figures in accordance with the broader revised definition. (See the NIBRS User Manual, Version 1.0 [1/17/2013] for the definitions of those individual offenses.) In addition, the UCR Program published any offenses of fondling, incest, and statutory rape submitted via the NIBRS in the crimes against persons category of other.

From the SRS

The UCR Program’s revised definition of rape is the same definition adopted specifically for the SRS and includes the offenses of rape, sodomy, and sexual assault with an object (without any breakdowns for individual offenses). Likewise, the UCR Program’s legacy definition of rape is the same definition formerly used in the SRS as forcible rape. Although some SRS agencies were able to apply the revised definition to their data collection procedures, not all agencies were able to do so. Therefore, the UCR Program published the rape data of law enforcement agencies that submitted their hate crime data via the SRS electronic record layout, or the Microsoft Excel Workbook Tool in accordance with the rape definition (revised or legacy) the agency applied in 2014.

Data provided

The hate crime data in this Web publication comprise a subset of information that law enforcement agencies submit to the UCR Program. Although the UCR Program historically calculates national estimates for specific tables in Crime in the United States, the program does not estimate any data (i.e., no estimation method is applied to account for missing data) in the Hate Crime Statistics Program. (See the subsection Agencies Contributing Data below and the accompanying table for more information about participating agencies.)

The types of hate crimes reported to the program (i.e., the biases that motivated the crimes) are further broken down into more specific categories. As collected for each hate crime incident, the aggregate data in this report include the following:

  • Incidents and offenses by bias motivation—Crimes reported to the FBI involve those motivated by biases based on race, gender, gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity, as well as crimes committed by and crimes directed against juveniles. Incidents may include one or more offense types.
  • Victims—The types of victims collected for hate crime incidents include individuals (adults and juveniles), businesses, institutions, and society as a whole.
  • Offenders—Law enforcement specifies the number of offenders (adults and juveniles), and when possible, the race and ethnicity of the offender or offenders as a group.
  • Location type—Law enforcement may specify one of 45 location designations, e.g., residence/home, parking/drop lot/garage.
  • Hate crime by jurisdiction—Includes data about hate crimes by state and agency.

Participation

Law enforcement’s support

Law enforcement’s support and participation have been the most vital factors in moving the hate crime data collection effort from concept to reality. The International Association of Chiefs of Police, the National Sheriffs’ Association, the former UCR Data Providers’ Advisory Policy Board (which is now part of the CJIS APB), the International Association of Directors of Law Enforcement Standards and Training, and the Association of State UCR Programs all have endorsed the UCR Program’s Hate Crime Statistics Program. In addition to this support, thousands of law enforcement agencies nationwide make crucial contributions to the program’s success as the officers within these agencies investigate offenses and report hate crimes when they determine the offenders’ actions were motivated by bias.

Agencies contributing data

Agencies that participated in the Hate Crime Statistics Program in 2014 represented more than 297 million inhabitants, or 93.4 percent of the nation’s population, and their jurisdictions covered 49 states, the District of Columbia, Guam, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. (See Table 12.) The following table presents the number of agencies that participated in hate crime reporting in 2014 by population group and the population covered collectively by those agencies within each group.

Number of Participating Agencies and Population Covered by Population Group, 2014

Agencies participating in UCR hate crime
reporting
Population group Number of
participating
agencies
Population
covered

 

Total

15,494

297,926,030

Group I
(Cities 250,000 and over)

79

58,205,055

Group II
(Cities 100,000 - 249,999)

207

30,587,101

Group III
(Cities 50,000 - 99,999)

475

32,761,072

Group IV
(Cities 25,000 - 49,999)

838

28,827,648

Group V
(Cities 10,000 - 24,999)

 

1,758

 

27,995,622

Group VI1
(Cities under 10,000)

7,939

23,377,953

Metropolitan
Counties1

1,820

71,779,106

Nonmetropolitan
Counties1

2,378

24,392,473

1Includes universities and colleges, state police agencies, and/or other agencies to which no population is attributed.

Contributor Resources

To assist contributing agencies with the new system requirements for electronically submitting hate crime data, the national UCR Program has published the following resources, which are available on the UCR Web page.

What do you think?

The E-Government Act of 2002 promotes more efficient uses of information technology by the federal government. This report is a product of the FBI’s effort to publish its statistics using twenty-first century technology and, as a result, reach a larger audience more efficiently. The FBI welcomes your feedback about this electronic report via a short evaluation form. Your comments will help us improve the presentation of future releases of Hate Crime Statistics.

What you won't find on this page

Raw data. The data presented in Hate Crime Statistics provides information about bias-motivated crimes in the United States broken down by state and by local agency. More detailed data (e.g., the subcategory breakdowns of bias motivations, the known offenders’ races, and the victim types for each agency submitting hate crime data to the national Program) are furnished in the UCR Program’s hate crime master files. For more information, contact the FBI’s CJIS Division via e-mail at crimestatsinfo@ic.fbi.gov or by telephone at:
(304) 625-2000.

Hate crime data for 2015. Hate Crime Statistics, 2015, will be published on the Web in the fall of 2016.

If you have questions about the data in this publication

For questions about this information or for Web assistance, please contact the FBI’s CJIS Division at (304) 625-2000. For more information about the UCR master files from which this publication was derived and other available UCR data, see UCR Electronic and Hard Copy Data Dissemination Standard Operating Procedures. To obtain UCR data not presented in this publication, please contact the FBI’s CJIS Division via e-mail at crimestatsinfo@ic.fbi.gov.

Suggested reference citation

The following is a suggested citation style for data users who need to reference information from this report:

United States Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation. (November 2015). Hate Crime Statistics, 2014. Retrieved (insert date), from (insert URL for data cited).