FBI
Releases Hate Crime Statistics for 2003
Washington, D.C.–According to a report released
today by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, antagonism
toward a particular race, religion, sexual orientation,
ethnicity/national origin, or physical or mental
disability prompted crimes against 9,100 victims
during 2003. Hate Crime Statistics, 2003,
published by the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting
(UCR) Program, includes data aggregated from hate
crime reports submitted by local, state, tribal,
and federal law enforcement agencies throughout
the Nation. The report documents 7,489 bias-motivated
incidents, which include 8,715 separate offenses.
Incidents
A review of the data by incident showed that all
but 4 of the incidents were classified as single-bias
(involving only one bias motivation). A breakdown
of the single-bias incidents by the type of bias
revealed that 51.4 percent were motivated by racial
bigotry, 17.9 percent were caused by religious intolerance,
16.6 percent were the result of a sexual-orientation
bias, and 13.7 percent were triggered by an
ethnicity/national origin bias. The remainder involved
a bias against a disability.
Offenses and Victims
The offenses of murder, forcible rape, aggravated
assault, simple assault, and intimidation are considered
by the UCR Program to be crimes against persons.
Within this category, intimidation was the most
often reported hate crime, comprising 49.7 percent
of the total crimes against persons in 2003. Simple
assault accounted for 32.8 percent of the total,
and aggravated assault comprised 16.7 percent. Murder
and forcible rape accounted for 0.3 percent and
0.1 percent, respectively, of crimes against
persons, and the offense category other
made up the remaining 0.5 percent.
Among the 14 bias-motivated murders reported by
law enforcement, 6 homicides were committed as a
result of a sexual-orientation bias, 5 were the
result of racial prejudice, and 2 were committed
because of a bias against an ethnicity/national
origin. One murder was the result of a hostility
toward a disability.
The UCR Program categorizes as crimes against
property the offenses of robbery, burglary,
larceny-theft, motor vehicle theft, arson, and damage/destruction/vandalism.
The latter was the most frequently reported hate
crime offense against property, accounting for 83.4
percent of the total. Of the 2,618 acts of destruction,
damage, or vandalism driven by bias, 47.6 percent
were directed at individuals, 10.5 percent were
aimed at business or financial institutions, 8.1 percent
were leveled at governmental entities, and another
8.1 percent were directed at religious organizations.
Unknown, multiple, or other victim types accounted
for the remainder.
Offenders
In addition to gathering hate crime data about incidents,
victims, and offenses, the UCR Program collects
data about known offenders. In the context
of hate crime data collection, the term known
offender does not imply that the identity of
the perpetrator is known but only that a distinguishing
attribute has been identified. With regard to the
attribute of race, among the 6,934 reported
offenders, 62.3 percent were white, and 18.5 percent
were black. The race was unknown for 10.7 percent
of offenders, and the remainder were of other races
or were members of a group composed of offenders
of varying races.
Location
The UCR Program analyzed the data by type of location
and found that the majority of hate crime incidents
(32.0 percent) took place in or on residential properties.
Highways, roads, alleys, or streets were the settings
for 17.6 percent of the reported incidents, and
11.8 percent took place at schools and colleges.
The remaining incidents were distributed among various
locations.
The information contained in the current report
was submitted to the FBI by 11,909 law enforcement
agencies. Although the data collected are not sufficient
to serve as a valid national or regional measure
of the extent of hate crime occurrences, they offer
perspectives on the general nature of the hate crime
phenomenon in the United States.
The
complete annual report, Hate Crime Statistics,
2003, is available on the FBI’s Internet
site at <www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm>.
