Explained: What does the FBI’s new report on hate crimes say?

Significantly, the FBI has said that “hate itself” is not a crime and that it is mindful of protecting freedom of speech and other civil liberties. 📣 Express Explained is now on Telegram

Hate crimes reported to the FBI rose last year to levels not seen in more than a decade. (AP Graphic)

So, what does the report say?

As per the report, in 2019 there were over 7,100 single-bias incidents involving more than 8,500 victims. Further, a breakdown of victims by types of bias shows that 57.6 per cent of the victims were targeted because of the offenders’ race/ethnicity/ancestry bias, over 20 per cent were targeted because of the offenders’ religious bias, over 16 per cent were targeted because of the offenders’ sexual-orientation bias, 2.7 per cent were targeted because of the offenders’ gender-identity bias, two per cent were targeted because of disability bias and 0.9 per cent were victimised because of gender bias. Other than this, there were 211 multiple-bias hate crime incidents that involved 260 victims.

Significantly, of the known offenders of these hate crimes, over 52 per cent were white, more than 23 per cent were Black or African American.

In 2019, over 24.6 per cent of the hate crime incidents occurred in or near residences or homes and more than 18 per cent occurred on highways, roads, alleys, streets and sidewalks. A little less than 10 per cent of the incidents occurred at schools or colleges. For over 11 per cent of the hate crime incidents, the location was unknown.

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