November 24, 2020•Advocacy Matters
Newly Released FBI Hate Crime Statistics for 2019
Disability Matters with Joyce Bender
November 24, 2020
#AdvocacyMatters
Newly Released FBI Hate Crime Statistics for 2019
On November 16, 2020, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released its 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. 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 1990s 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 2019 data last week. Across the country, 15,588 law enforcement agencies provided information about the offenses, victims, offenders, and the locations of hate crimes. The data showed, 7,314 criminal incidents and 8,559 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, 2% were based on the disability. 57.6% were victims targeted because of their race, ethnicity, or ancestry. 20.1% were targeted because of their religion. 16.7% were targeted because of their sexual orientation.
If you go to our website at www.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, 1,424 agencies report overall crime data to the UCR. Only 15 of those law enforcement agencies submitted hate crime incidents to the UCR. Pennsylvania reported 41 incidents of hate crimes in 2019 for a population of 12,585,495 people. There were 0 incidents of crime motivated by disability reported by those 15 agencies. 28 bias-motived incidents reported on the basis of race, ethnicity and ancestry. 9 incidents were based on religion. 4 incidents were based on sexual orientation. 0 were based on gender and 0 were based on gender identity.
The 15 police agencies that reported hate crimes in Pennsylvania included:
East Pennsboro Township, Forest City, Hampden Township, Johnstown, Kenhorst, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Reading, Rush Township, Westtown-East Goshen Regional, Penn State University/University Park, Shippensburg University, State Police in Bedford County, Chester County, and Venango County.
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Get involved. Look at the data in your state. Visit www.disabilityrightspa.org for links to the data from the FBI.
We also ask that you stay tuned to Disability Matters with Joyce Bender. We expect legislation to be introduced into the 117th Congress that seeks reforms to the current reporting system.
FBI Hate Crime Statistics – Background
FBI 2019 Hate Crime Statistics Press Release
FBI 2019 Hate Crime Statistics Links to Individual State Data
FBI 2019 Hate Crime Statistics Pennsylvania
News Articles on the FBI Data Release