U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation
For Release
Monday, November 19, 2001
9:00 A.M. Eastern Time
Washington D.C.
FBI National Press Office
(202) 324-3691


Hate Crime Statistics, 2000

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) today released the publication Hate Crime Statistics, 2000, which annually reports on bias-motivated incidents, offenses, victims, and known offenders. During 2000, law enforcement reported 8,063 bias-motivated criminal incidents to the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program. As viewed by the national Program, a hate crime may have multiple offenses, victims, and offenders within one incident. Thus, the 8,063 incidents involved a total of 9,430 offenses, 9,924 victims, and 7,530 known (distinguishable) offenders.

Intimidation continued to be the most often reported hate crime offense during 2000, accounting for 34.9 percent of all measured offenses and 53.7 percent of total crimes against persons.

Destruction/damage/vandalism to property was the most frequently reported crime against property and comprised 29.3 percent of the total offenses and 85.3 percent of total crimes against property.

Nineteen of the hate crime victims were murdered as a result of their killers' prejudice. Ten of these homicides involved racial bias; 6 were attributed to a bias against an ethnicity or national origin; 2 more were driven by bias against a sexual orientation; and 1 resulted from a religious bias.

Under UCR definitions, a victim may be either a person, a business, an institution, or society as a whole. Of the 9,430 hate crime offenses, 7,745 were committed against individuals; 6,130 targeted persons and 1,615 targeted their property. Businesses, religious organizations, and various other institutions were the targets of 1,685 of the reported offenses.

The term known offender, for UCR purposes, does not imply that the identity of the perpetrator is known but only that a distinguishing attribute, race, has been identified. Of the 7,530 known offenders, 4,847 were white, 1,411 were black, and the remainder were other races (157) or of unknown race (729). Multiracial groups (groups of offenders of varying races) accounted for 386 offenders.

Racial prejudice was the motive in the majority of single-bias incidents, 53.8 percent; religious bias underlay 18.3 percent; sexual-orientation bias, 16.1 percent; and ethnicity/national origin, 11.3 percent. Disability bias was the catalyst in less than 1 percent of incidents. There were 8 victims of incidents involving multiple biases in 2000.

The majority of hate crime incidents (32.1 percent) occurred in or on residential properties. Highways, roads, alleys, or streets were the settings for 17.9 percent of the reported incidents, and 11.4 percent took place at schools and colleges. The remaining incidents were distributed among various locations.

Agencies in 48 states and the District of Columbia participated in the Hate Crime Data Collection Program during 2000. Collectively, the 11,690 reporting agencies represent 236.9 million United States inhabitants or 84.2 percent of the Nation's population. Though the reports from these agencies are insufficient to allow a valid national or regional measure of the volume and types of crimes motivated by hate, they offer perspectives on the general nature of hate crime occurrence.


Hate Crime Statistics, 2000, can be found on the FBI's Internet site at http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm

 

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