Newly Released FBI Hate Crime Statistics for 2019

Disability Matters with Joyce Bender

December 13, 2022

 #AdvocacyMatters Segment

Newly Released FBI Hate Crime Statistics for 2019

On December 12, 2022, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released it annual collection of hate crime statistics as reported by participating police agencies across the country. Hate crime data is collected by local law enforcement and submitted to the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting System (UCR). The Uniform Crime Reporting System is the same system law enforcement uses to report other crimes such as assault, burglary, arson, murder, intimidation, theft, rape, human trafficking, vandalism, and more. The UCR publishes data on crime in the U.S. and its purpose is to generate reliable information.

Hate crimes were added to the UCR in the early 1990’s after an Act of Congress so that it was easier to determine if vandalism, intimidation, murder, and other crimes were motivated by bias. Police could indicate in the UCR whether an incident, like vandalism, intimidation, murder, or assault, was bias motivated.

The FBI released its 2021 data yesterday. Across the country, 11,834 law enforcement agencies provided information about the offenses, victims, offenders, and the locations of hate crimes. The data showed 7,262 criminal incidents and 8,673 related offenses were motivated by bias toward race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender, and gender identity according to the FBI. The FBI does not estimate and cannot count the incidents of hate crimes for police agencies that do not submit reports.

Of those incidents nationally, 1.86% were based on disability. 61.56% were victims targeted because of their race, ethnicity, or ancestry. 13.87% were targeted because of their religion. 15.5% were targeted because of their sexual orientation.

If you go to our website at disabilityrightspa.org, we have links to various reports from the Federal Bureau of Investigation so that you can view the national data and look directly into reports from your state.

What do we know about Pennsylvania?

In Pennsylvania, there are 1,504 law enforcement agencies. Only 41 of those law enforcement agencies submitted hate crime incidents to the F BI. Pennsylvania reported 172 incidents of hate crimes in 2021 for a population of 13,002,700 people. There was 1 incident of crime motivated by disability reported by those 41 agencies. 124 bias-motived incidents were reported based on race, ethnicity, and ancestry. 17 incidents were based on religion. 22 incidents were based on sexual orientation. 1 was based on gender and 0 was based on gender identity.

#AdvocacyMatters

Get involved. Look at the data in your state. Visit disabilityrightspa.org for links to the data from the FBI.

Encourage individuals to report bias motivated crime to the police.

FBI Hate Crime Statistics – Background

https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/ucr/hate-crime

FBI 2021 Hate Crime Statistics Press Release

https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/press-releases/fbi-releases-2021-hate-crime-statistics

FBI 2021 Hate Crime Statistics Links to Individual State Data

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/hate-crime

FBI 2021 Hate Crime Statistics Pennsylvania

https://crime-data-explorer.app.cloud.gov/pages/explorer/crime/hate-crime