Hate Crimes Increased Nearly 12%, FBI Says In Revised 2021 Report

ACROSS AMERICA — The FBI on Monday reported an alarming, nearly 12 percent rise in hate crimes in 2021 — to a total of nearly 10,500 — in a reversal of an earlier report that said bias-based crimes were trending downward.

The agency said a report released in December that appeared to show a drop was missing data from some of the nation’s largest cities, including New York and Los Angeles.

The hate crime numbers now include those and other large departments, and the total is the highest level in decades, Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, told The Associated Press.

“We are in a unique and disturbing era where hate crimes overall stay elevated for longer punctuated by broken records,” he said.

“We are in a unique and disturbing era where hate crimes overall stay elevated for longer punctuated by broken records,” he said.

Most of the victims, 64.5 percent, were targeted because of their race, ethnicity or ancestry; another 16 percent were targeted over their sexual orientation; and 14 percent of cases involved religious bias, according to the FBI report.

Half of the religion cases targeted Jewish people, underpinning a report last week from the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, which found antisemitic and white supremacist propaganda surged to a five-year high last year.

• Related: White Supremacist, Antisemitic Propaganda Soared In U.S. In 2022: ADL

“Hate crimes and the devastation they cause communities have no place in this country,” Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement. “The Justice Department is committed to every tool and resource at our disposal to combat bias-motivated violence in all its forms.”

Also according to the FBI report, intimidation and assault made up most the largest portion of the cases, and 19 rapes and 18 murders were reported to be hate crimes.

Monday’s report also underscores the need for better record-keeping.

“We’re still not getting enough data to know what the extent of the problem is,” Jill Garvey, chief of staff of the Western States Center, told the AP.

The data shortfall in the previous report released in December was largely due to changes in how police must report their data to the FBI. To ensure a more complete picture, agency officials went back and allowed large departments to report under the previous system.

“Hate crimes and the devastation they cause communities have no place in this country. The Justice Department is committed to

The original report released by the agency in December required data from law enforcement agencies to be submitted through a new system, which decreased participation — including from some of the biggest agencies in the country. The FBI then accepted data through the system it had used in previous years to increase participation and released the updated report Monday.

Nationally, the agency said hate crimes jumped 11.6 percent in 2021 compared to 2020.

The supplemental report released Monday shows hate crime data has been received from police departments covering 91.1 percent of the reports, compared with 64.8 percent represented in the December report.

With the supplemental data included, the FBI is now reporting 10,840 incidents and 12,411 related offenses.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.