Over 7,000 hate crimes were reported to the FBI in 2021. Here's why that data is flawed.
Despite increasing concerns about the rise of bias-motivated crimes and growing domestic extremism in the U.S., even fewer law enforcement agencies reported data on hate crimes to the FBI last year.
An annual FBI report released Monday found there were more than 7,000 hate crimes in 2021. But that's just a fraction of the true number, according to experts – including the bureau's director.
"The FBI's hate crime data release is so severely hampered by a decline in participating agencies," said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at the California State University, San Bernardino. "It is simply not representative of the actual hate crime trend, which is up."
What is a hate crime?
The FBI defines a hate crime as a "committed criminal offense which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias(es) against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity."
What to know about the FBI hate crime data
There are more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies in the U.S., and it's not mandatory for state, local and tribal agencies to submit data on hate crimes.
While 93% of agencies participated in 2020, about 65% participated in 2021, the FBI said, attributing the decline to a nationwide transition to a different reporting system. That means it's impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions about hate crime trends year-over-year, the FBI said Monday.
"Some jurisdictions fail to report hate crime statistics, while others claim there are no hate crimes in their community – a fact that would be welcome, if true," FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate committee last month.
In a statement, Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, called the new FBI report "woefully inadequate." He noted 35 major U.S. cities reported zero hate crimes in 2021.
The nation's two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, did not provide data. The third-largest, Chicago, reported zero, according to the FBI's report.
Wray said the FBI is working with jurisdictions "to better track and report hate crimes, in an accurate, timely, and publicly transparent manner." Agency participation for 2022 has already gone up from 2021, the FBI said.
Meanwhile, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates there are a quarter of a million hate crime victimizations each year.
"We count maybe 10% of hate crimes," said Heidi Beirich, co-founder of the nonprofit Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. "This reporting gap is a disaster and really needs to be fixed."
What the FBI hate crime report says
There were more than 7,000 single-bias incidents involving more than 8,700 victims, the FBI said.
Of those, victims were targeted because of the offenders’ race/ethnicity/ancestry bias (65%), sexual-orientation bias (16%), religious bias (13%), gender identity bias (4%), disability bias (2%) and gender bias (1%).
There were also 188 multiple-bias hate crime incidents that involved 271 victims, the FBI said.
Of the more than 5,700 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons, 44% were intimidation, about 36% were simple assault, and about 18% were aggravated assault. Thirteen rapes and nine murders were reported as hate crimes.
About 56% of the more than 6,300 known offenders were white, and about 21% were Black or African American, among others.
Other groups report record levels of hate crimes
In the absence of reliable federal data, numerous research and advocacy groups track hate crimes.
Using data from 18 states and D.C., the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism found hate crimes rose 21% to the highest level since 2001. The group's survey of the largest U.S. cities found a rise in anti-Asian crimes (224%), anti-Jewish crimes (59%) and anti-LGBTQ crimes (51%), among others.
The advocacy group Stop AAPI Hate reported 6,273 hate incidents against Asian American and Pacific Islander people.
The Anti-Defamation League said antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high of 2,717 – a 34% increase. That's the highest number since the group began tracking in 1979.
After the FBI report's release, the Muslim-Jewish Advisory Council called on all law enforcement agencies to transition to the new reporting system and submit hate crimes data.
In a statement Monday, U.S. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said statistics in the coming years will provide a "richer and more complete picture" of hate crimes nationwide as more agencies transition to the data collection system.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: FBI hate crime data for 2021 flawed as agency participation declines