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NO HATE
CRIMES!
From the FBI's Website
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About Our Program
Reporting Hate Crimes/Discrimination
FBI Cases & Stories
Resources
Civil
Rights Home |
Crimes of hatred and prejudice?from lynchings to
cross burnings to vandalism of synagogues?are a sad
fact of American history, but the term "hate crime"
did not enter the nation's vocabulary until the
1980s, when emerging hate groups like the Skinheads
launched a wave of bias-related crime. The FBI began
investigating what we now call hate crimes as far
back as the early 1920s, when we opened
our first Ku Klux Klan case. Today, we remain
dedicated to working with state and local
authorities to prevent these crimes and to bring to
justice those who commit them.
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Hate Crime Statistics
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 Following
passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of
1990 and at the request of the Attorney
General, the FBI has gathered and published
hate crime statistics every year since 1992.
The following reports are available on this
website: |
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2006
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2005
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2004
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2003 (pdf)
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2002 (pdf)
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2001 (pdf)
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2000 (pdf)
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1999 (pdf)
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1998 (pdf)
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1997 (pdf)
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1996 (pdf)
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1995 |
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Hate crimes (also known as bias
motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because
of his or her membership in a certain social group, usually defined
by race, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity,
nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation.
Hate crimes differ from conventional crime because they are not
directed simply at an individual, but are meant to cause fear and
intimidation in an entire group or class of people. Hate crime can
take many forms. Incidents may involve physical assault, damage to
property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, or
offensive graffiti or letters.
History
Concern about hate crimes has become increasingly prominent among
policymakers in many nations and at all levels of government in
recent years, but the phenomenon is not new. Examples from the past
include Roman persecution of Christians, the Ottoman genocide of
Armenians, and the Nazi "final solution" for the Jews, and more
recently, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda.
Hate crimes have shaped and sometimes defined world history. In the
United States, racial and religious biases have inspired most hate
crimes. As Europeans began to colonize the New World in the 16th and
17th centuries, Native Americans increasingly became the targets of
bias-motivated intimidation and violence. During the past two
centuries, some of the more typical examples of hate crimes in the
US include lynching's of African Americans, cross burnings to drive
black families from predominantly white neighborhoods, assaults on
gay, lesbian and transgender people, and the painting of swastikas
on Jewish synagogues.
Hate crime victims
In the United States, anti-Black bias was the most frequently
reported hate crime motivation. (African-Americans constitute the
second-largest minority group; Hispanics are the largest).[4] Of the
nearly 8,000 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 1995, almost 3,000
of them were motivated by bias against African Americans. Other
frequently reported bias motivations were anti-white, anti-Jewish,
anti-gay, and anti-Hispanic. |
