FBI: Hate Crimes in US Surged Nearly 12% in 2021, Mostly Targeting Black People
A new report by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) says the frequency of hate crimes across the United States saw a record increase throughout 2021, especially those motivated by bias against Black people.
The bureau said on Monday that more than 10,000 instances of hate crimes were reported during that year, reflecting a 11.6-percent overall increase.
The percentage reflected a 31% increase from 8,263 cases the previous year, while the year-on-year increase in hate crimes was the largest in more than three decades.
The report added that 64.5% of victims in 2021 were targeted because of their race, ethnicity or ancestry bias.
It also noted that racist incidents targeting Black people comprised the largest number of the incidents, namely some 2,233 cases.
A separate analysis showed that anti-Black crimes were followed in frequency by crimes committed against white people (some 948 cases), the Jewish people (817 cases), and Asian people (746 cases).
The agency also recorded 152 hate crimes targeting Muslims, with a total of 190 victims, which added up to about one in every 20,000 Muslims.
The FBI’s new analysis marks the first time the bureau has been confidently reporting national hate crimes trends since it transitioned to a new data collection system.
Of course, uniform crime data released by the FBI in October 2022 contained gaps, because only 52% of US law enforcement agencies reported full 12-month information related to 2021.
“Of the 8,327 hate crime offenses classified as crimes against persons in the updated 2021 dataset, 43.2 percent were intimidation, 35.5 percent were simple assault, and 20.1 percent were aggravated assault,” the agency said in a news release.
FBI officials said they typically track the 130 most populous cities across 16 states to identify statistically significant trends. Of those, 96 cities were able to provide data for the new report.
The nation’s two largest cities – New York and Los Angeles – are now included in the hate crimes analysis reported on Monday, while Chicago was able to provide two quarters worth of data for the report.
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), says the report confirms that hate crimes in the US reached “record high levels” in 2021.
Source: Press TV