More than 7,000 single-bias hate crime incidents involving more than 8,500 victims took place in 2019, with slightly more than one-fifth of these victims (20.1%) targeted due to religious bias on the part of the offenders, according to FBI data published Nov. 16.
By comparison, 57.6% of victims were targeted due to race/ethnicity/ancestry bias by the offender, 16.7% due to sexual-orientation bias, 2.7% because of gender identity bias, 2% due to disability bias and 0.9% because of gender bias.
The FBI defines 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.”
Hate crime incidents are categorized as either single-bias or multiple-bias, and each incident might involve more than one offense, victim and/or offender. Victims can be individuals or entities (such as businesses, houses of faith or government facilities).
Of the 1,650 offenses motivated by religious bias, 60.3% (995 offenses) were due to anti-Jewish bias on the part of the offender.
The next most common were due to anti-Islamic bias (13.3%), followed by anti-Catholic (4%), anti-other Christian (3.6%), anti-Sikh (3%), anti-Eastern Orthodox (2.8%), anti-multiple religions (2.5%) and anti-Protestant (1.5%).
The remaining offenses were due to bias against Mormons (0.8%), Hindus (0.4%), Jehovah’s Witnesses (0.4%), atheists or agnostics (0.4%) and Buddhists (0.3%).
The most frequent location for hate crimes was in or near homes (24.6%), followed by public roads or sidewalks (18.2%). Hate crimes taking place at houses of faith was the fifth most frequent location, with 4.4% of all 2019 hate crimes taking place in these locations.
The 2019 data is available here. Data from 1995 to the present is available here.
Managing editor for news and opinion at Good Faith Media.
