JACKSONVILLE, Fla. – More than 5,000 hate crime incidents were reported to the FBI in 2014.
According to the FBI's latest statistics, law enforcement agencies reported 5,479 hate crime incidents involving 6,418 offenses to the Uniform Crime Reporting Program last year. The crimes, which often have a devastating impact on the communities where they occur, left 6,727 victims in their wake, FBI officials said.
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The latest figures are down from 2013, when 5,928 criminal incidents involving 6,933 offenses were reported.
Hate Crime Statistics, 2014 provides information about the offenses, victims and offenders. Among some of the highlights:
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Of the 5,462 single-bias incidents reported in 2014, 47 percent were racially motivated. Other motivators included sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity, gender identity, disability and gender. - Of the 6,418 reported hate crime offenses, 63.1 percent were crimes against persons and 36.1 percent were crimes against property. The remaining offenses were crimes against society, like illegal drug activity or prostitution.
- The majority of the 4,048 reported crimes against persons involved intimidation (43.1 percent) and simple assault (37.4 percent).
- Most of the 2,317 hate crimes against property were acts of destruction, damage and vandalism (73.1 percent).
- Individuals were overwhelmingly the most common victim of a single-bias hate crime, accounting for 82.4 percent of the reported 6,418 offenses. The remaining victim types were businesses, financial institutions, religious organizations, government and society or the public.
- Also during 2014, law enforcement agencies reported 5,192 known offenders in 5,479 bias-motivated incidents. (In the UCR Program, "known offender" does not imply that the suspect's identity is known, only that some aspect of the suspect was identified by a victim or witness, such as race, ethnicity, or age.)
While 15,494 law enforcement agencies contributed to UCR's Hate Crime Statistics report in 2014, only 1,666 agencies reported hate crimes within their jurisdiction (the remaining agencies reported zero hate crimes).
To enhance the accuracy of hate crime reporting, representatives from the UCR Program participated in five hate crime training sessions provided jointly by the Department of Justice and the FBI. Since April 2015, DOJ and the FBI provided the training sessions to law enforcement agencies and community groups in several different areas of the county. UCR personnel also worked with states to ensure proper data submission and meet with police agencies to provide training and discuss crime reporting issues.
In addition to releasing annual Hate Crime Statistics reports, which give the nation a clearer picture of the overall crime problem, the FBI also investigates incidents of hate crimes, including crimes that fall under federal jurisdiction, assist state and local authorities during their own investigations, and in some cases -- with the U.S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division -- monitor developing situations to determine if federal action is appropriate.
The 2016 release of the Hate Crimes Statistics report, which will contain 2015 data, will feature even more information -- expanded bias types in the religion category and the added bias type of anti-Arab under the race/ethnicity/ancestry category. The collection of both types of data began in January 2015.