Hate Crime Statistics

Every year, a variety of hate crimes take place in the United States. Data about these crimes is collected and displayed to the public by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). This information is broken down into several categories, including a list of incidents and offenses, details about people who have been victimized by hate crime and information about those who commit these nefarious deeds.

Data about hate crimes in 2007 was collected from 2,025 separate law enforcement agencies and tabulated by the FBI as part of their Uniform Crime Reporting Program. They determined that there were 7,624 related crimes involving 9,006 offenses which were committed by 6,962 separate people. In total, their illegal activities affected 7,632 victims, and astoundingly more than half of these incidents were found to be motivated by racial hatred. The other factors that led to these hate crimes were religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/nationality and disability. Religious bias was the second highest on the list, and it made up for 16.4% of the crimes.

Racial prejudices clearly continue to be the most prevalent reason behind hate crimes, and a further breakdown displays that 69.3% of the 4,724 racially induced criminal offenses were against black people, and 18.4% were against whites. Other groups, including mixed races all fell below the 10% level. 1,256 offenses on the list were found to be based on prejudices over the perceived national origin of individuals. 61.7% of these were directed towards Hispanics and the remaining 38.3% were listed as all other ethnicities.

Next on the list were offenses stemming from a religious bias. There were 1,477 in total, and 68.4% of them were against Jewish people. After that, the two groups that were most affected included "other" religions at 9.5% and Islamic at 9%. Religions that registered in at less than 5% each include Catholics, multiple religions, Protestants and atheists/agnostics.

Sexual orientation accounted for the third highest category with 1,460 offenses. Male homosexuals were afflicted with 59.2% of these offenses, with another 24.8% against homosexuals in general and 12.6% against female homosexuals. The remaining offenses were directed at heterosexual and bi-sexual persons.

The final category involves 82 offenses against disabled people, with 62 being carried out on mentally disabled individuals and 20 on those with physical disabilities.

The offenses committed are listed as crimes against a person or property. There were 3,579 property related incidents, and 5,408 offenses against other people. Of those, 47.4% were intimidation, 31.1% were simple assault and 20.6% were aggravated assault. The remaining offenses included murder, rape and "other".

Purchase Museum Tickets
Family Page
Make a Difference
Become an Investigator
Visit our Crime Library
Join our Blog