About hate crime statistics

Uniform Crime Reports: Hate Crime Statistics, Annual, 2007

Background

Congress mandates the collection of hate crime data

On April 23, 1990, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, 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 system to comply with the congressional mandate.

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 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 data collection.

Subsequent changes to 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 and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The FBI started gathering data for the additional bias type on January 1, 1997.

* The Church Arson Prevention Act, which was signed into law in July 1996, removed the sunset clause from the original statute and mandated that the hate crime data collection become a permanent part of the UCR Program. (See Hate Crime Statistics Act for referenced legislation, as amended.)

Collection design

The designers of the hate crime data collection 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.

Data provided

The hate crime data in this Web publication comprise a subset of information that law enforcement agencies submit to the UCR Program. 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: offense type, location, bias motivation, victim type, number of individual victims, number of offenders, and the race of the offenders.

* Incidents and offenses--Crimes reported to the FBI involve those motivated by biases based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, and disability.

* Victims--The victim of a hate crime may be an individual, a business, an institution, or society as a whole.

* Offenders--Law enforcement specifies the number of offenders and, when possible, the race of the offender or offenders as a group.

* Location type--Law enforcement may specify one of 25 location designations, e.g., residences or homes, schools or colleges, and parking lots or garages.

* 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 Criminal Justice Information Services Advisory Policy Board), 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 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 as known hate crimes those they determine were motivated by biases.