Section I—Hate Crime Statistics

Uniform Crime Reports: Hate Crime Statistics, Annual, 2002

Arson investigations led to hate crime reports of 38 offenses in 2002. Of these, officials determined that 16 were the result of a racial bias, 13 were associated with a religious bias, 6 with a sexual-orientation bias, and 3 with an ethnicity or national origin bias. (See Table 4.)

Victims

In the context of hate crime data collection, the term victim refers to a person, business, institution, or society as a whole, unless otherwise specified.

By Bias Motivation

During 2002, there were 9,222 victims associated with 8,832 hate crime offenses. A study of victim data for single-bias hate crimes showed that racial bias motivated the crimes against nearly half--49.7 percent--of all the victims. Offenders committed crimes against 18.0 percent of hate crime victims because of religious bias, 16.4 percent due to sexual-orientation bias, 15.3 percent because of ethnicity or national origin bias, and 0.5 percent due to disability bias. There were 11 victims of the 3 multiple-bias hate crime incidents in 2002. (Based on Table 1.)

Among the 4,580 victims of racially bias-motivated offenses, 67.2 percent were victims of anti-black bias, 19.9 percent of anti-white bias, 6.1 percent of anti-Asian or anti-Pacific Islander bias, and 1.6 percent were victims of anti-American Indian or anti-Alaskan Native bias. The remaining 5.3 percent of victims of racially bias-motivated offenses resulted from bias directed at groups composed of individuals of different races. (Based on Table 1.)

Victims of anti-Jewish bias accounted for 65.3 percent of the 1,659 victims of religious bias offenses. Anti-Islamic bias motivated the crimes against 10.5 percent of those victims, anti-Catholic bias contributed to 4.3 percent, anti-Protestant bias accounted for 3.5 percent, and anti-Atheism or anti-Agnosticism, etc. bias contributed to 0.2 percent. Biases against members of other religious groups and those directed at groups made up of individuals from multiple religious faiths accounted for 14.3 percent and 1.9 percent of the victims, respectively. (Based on Table 1.)

Examination of the data for the 1,513 victims of crimes motivated by sexual-orientation bias revealed that 65.0 percent were victims of anti-male homosexual bias, 17.6 percent were targets of anti-homosexual bias (male and female), 14.6 percent were victims of anti-female homosexual bias, 1.7 percent of anti-heterosexual bias, and 1.0 percent of anti-bisexual bias. (Based on Table 1.)

Of the 1,409 victims of ethnicity/national origin bias in 2002, 45.4 percent were victims of anti-Hispanic bias, and 54.6 percent were victims of a bias against other ethnicities or national origins. (Based on Table 1.)

Disability bias motivated the hate crimes against 50 victims. Sixty percent (30 victims) were targets of anti-mental disability bias and 40.0 percent (20 victims) were targets of anti-physical disability bias. (Based on Table 1.)

By Offense Category

A breakdown of the data for the 9,222 hate crime victims in 2002 showed that 64.6 percent (5,960) were victims of crimes against persons, 34.8 percent (3,213 victims) were targets of crimes against property, and 0.5 percent (49) were victims of crimes against society. (Based on Table 2.)