Federal Bureau of Investigation just released its Hate Crime Statistics report for 2010. And while the figures haven’t changed so much from last year’s, they’re still troubling.
Local law enforcement agencies reported 8,208 hate-crime victims. A majority of the victims fell prey to racist violence (47.3 percent). Of the 3,949 victims of racially-motivated attacks, 70 percent were attacked for being black and 17.7 for being white. Of the 6,008 known offenders in all hate crimes, 58.6 percent were white and 18.4 were black.
It’s interesting to note that religion and sexual orientation got targeted for attacks at similar rates (20 to 19.3 percent or 1,552 to 1,528 victims respectively). But before you go believing NOM’s line that Christians and “marriage defenders” are being targeted for their faith, keep in mind that Jewish and Islamic faiths faced the brunt with of violence (accounting for 67 to 12.7 percent of the the 1,552 anti-religious attacks) while Christians ranked just over seven percent.
Furthermore, of the 1,528 attacks motivated by sexual orientation, gay men got targeted 57.3 percent of the time and lesbians got targeted 11.8 percent of the time—presumably including bisexuals. Sadly, the report does not include anti-trans crime yet, but thanks to the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr., Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009, local authorities have begun tracking such data.
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Aiden
This makes me wonder about all the black gay bashing victims queerty never writes
about.
Jim Hlavac
Given 320,000,000 Americans I’d say to have “only” 6,624 (yes, too high,) such crimes shows a remarkably peaceful nation.
But then I see this: “gay men got targeted 57.3 percent of the time and lesbians got targeted 11.8 percent of the time” — which I’m assuming means that 57.3% of the
victims of orientation crimes were gay men and bisexuals, perhaps – and so 69.1 percent of the orientation crimes were gays? Who were the rest? Are heteros being targeted for being heteros? By whom?
Kev C
@Jim Hlavac: FBI crime statistics are not credible. Not even slightly.
Bill
No. 2 · Jim Hlavac wrote, “But then I see this: “gay men got targeted 57.3 percent of the time and lesbians got targeted 11.8 percent of the time” — which I’m assuming means that 57.3% of the victims of orientation crimes were gay men and bisexuals, perhaps – and so 69.1 percent of the orientation crimes were gays? Who were the rest?”
QUEERTY’s summary was misleading. http://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/hate-crime/2010/narratives/hate-crime-2010-victims has the actual breakdown:
Sexual-orientation bias
Of the 1,528 victims targeted due to an offender’s sexual-orientation bias:
* 57.3 percent were victims of an offender’s anti-male homosexual bias.
* 27.5 percent were victims of an anti-homosexual bias.
* 11.8 percent were victims of an anti-female homosexual bias.
* 1.4 percent were victims of an anti-heterosexual bias.
* 1.9 percent were victims of an anti-bisexual bias.
Apparently they distinguish perpetrators who don’t like gay men but don’t care about lesbians from perpetrators who don’t like lesbians but don’t care about gay men from perpetrators who hate both equally. I doubt if 27.5 percent could account for cases in which both gays and lesbians were victims of the same crime.
How you sort victims into these categories without interviewing the perpetrators is not clear.
I’m not sure what to make of the anti-heterosexual bias number. Do the perpetrators include jilted bisexuals or non-LGBT people who just hate the opposite sex?
JayKay
So does this take actual hate crimes into account, or just those that actually get charged as hate crimes?
Kev C
@JayKay:
“The data used in creating this table were from all law enforcement agencies submitting one or more hate crime incidents for at least 1 month of the calendar year.”
They don’t actually say. The do warn not to use this data for anything because it’s worthless. Reporting and classification of hate crimes is discretionary. These statistics have no legal or scientific value whatsoever.
B
No. 6 · Kev C wrote, ‘They don’t actually say. The do warn not to use this data for anything because it’s worthless.’
They didn’t say that – they said not to use it for various comparisons because a
variety of factors impact the rate, so a simplistic “tough on crime” approach may end up solving the wrong problem.
Their data simply gives you a rough indication of whether hate crimes are increasing or decreasing nationwide (averaged over enough reporting agencies so that one agency becoming more diligent in reporting crimes will not change the numbers significantly).
You also have to keep statistical fluctuations in mind – variations of approximately the square root of the number of crimes per year are typical with no actual change in the crime rate – the crimes follow a Poisson distribution.
Kev C
@B:
@B: The FBI data represents nothing actually since there is no consistency of reporting or regulation.
Now compare their data to UK hate crimes statistics.
UK (minus Scotland) has 48,000 total hate crimes for 2010:
http://www.acpo.presscentre(–DOT–)com/Press-Releases/ACPO-publishes-hate-crime-data-for-2010-111.aspx
Scotland has over 5000 total hate crimes for 2011:
http://www.copfs.gov(–DOT–)uk/Publications/2011/05/Hate-Crime-Scotland-2010-11
B
No. 8 · Kev C wrote, “@B: The FBI data represents nothing actually since there is no consistency of reporting or regulation.”
You missed the point – those inconsistencies don’t change from year to year by very much due to government “inertia.” While you can’t use the FBI data to compare two otherwise similar towns, you can use it to see if the hate crime rate for the U.S. as a whole is going up or down by significant amounts. As long as each agency reporting provides a small fraction of the total, you are protected against changes in reporting as they all won’t improve or change at the same time.
For exmaple, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime_laws_in_the_United_States#Hate_Crime_Statistics_Act_of_1990 shows FBI hate-crime statistics by various catagories from 1995 to 2008. In the Religion category, there was a noticeable upwards spike in 2001. There was an even more pronounced spike in the Ethnic/National Origin category in 2001, with the number of victims going up by more than a factor of 2 compared to the average for nearby years. Gee. 2001. Do you really think the data is completely meaningless and is not showing a pretty good indication that various hooligans were targeting anyone they thought was from an Arab country or was a Muslim? In fact, the FBI data on that more or less verified that the complaints from those minorities about being targeted by various disreputable miscreants were by and large true.
Kev C
@B: No you can’t tell if it’s gone up or down per year because it’s volutary reporting from a fraction of all agencies. It could mean that more police departments are contributing data this year than last.
A poster at Pam’s House Blend also noted that police in southern states report fewer hate crimes than northern ones. The FBI report is dildoes.
Kev C
Here’s a breakdown of various statistics:
UK = 900 hate crimes per 1 million people
Finland = 180 hate crimes per 1 million people
Canada = 180 hate crimes per 1 million people
USA = 27 hate crimes per 1 million people
logic
According to the U.S. Census Bureau at http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/2011/files/racehisp.html here are some statistics of our population and race between the years of 2000, 2005-2008 in the 1,000s.
2000
white – 228,107
black – 35,705
hispanic – 35,306
2005
white – 237,204
black – 37,732
hispanic – 42,529
2006
white – 238,999
black – 38,160
hispanic – 43,985
2007
white – 240,882
black – 38,622
hispanic – 245,203
2008
white – 242,639
black – 39,059
hispanic – 41,127
According to bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov (Bureau of Justice Statistics) Hate Crime Report at http://bjs.ojp.usdoj.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=1760 Table-9 between 2003-2009 the total percentage of hate crime victims in the United States:
White – 61%
Black – 13%
Hispanic – 17%
To actually quote from the first paragraph of this study – “From 2003 to 2009, the greatest percentage of hate crime victimizations were against while, non-Hispanic individuals.
A little further down on Table-10 you will see the annual average victimizations:
White – 118,500
Black – 25,200
Hispanic – 33,000
The rest of the figures regarding race closely follow the above accounts.
logic
So who is right??? These stats have way more figures but are they correct in respect to the FBIs? Through out my whole life in inner city type environments I have only seen black on white violence and hate or white on white. I’ve seen one white kid fall in a fight between himself and another white kid and get stompted by about ten black kids who didn’t know either of them but just wanted to be a white kid up. I’ve been attacked (robbed, gun pulled on twice, got things throw at my head and broke) multiple times by only blacks. And for all these incidents I was just walking down the road. We have all been around black people and everyday people know what their like. We don’t even need stats and figures because we are in the shit.
B
No. 10 · Kev C wrote, “@B: No you can’t tell if it’s gone up or down per year because it’s volutary reporting from a fraction of all agencies. It could mean that more police departments are contributing data this year than last.”
Wrong, Kev – all that does is add some of noise. What you are missing is that they summing data from a large number of police departments. All the police departments don’t change their reporting in the same direction at the same time. Just look at the case I gave – an increase of over a factor of 2 in one category of hate crimes restricted to 2001 (you know, the year that the World Trade Center was destroyed, giving the bigots an excuse for some ethnic bashing), only to have the numbers go down to “normal” the next year, when sanity started to rear its ugly head. If what you said was the explanation, the numbers should have been going crazy from one year to the next, year after year, and they just aren’t doing that.
More consistent reporting criteria will give you better data, but the data the FBI does get is not useless – it just doesn’t tell you much beyond nationwide trends where you are looking for short-term unusual changes.
Then you wrote, “A poster at Pam’s House Blend also noted that police in southern states report fewer hate crimes than northern ones.” Can’t you read? I clearly stated that you couldn’t use the FBI reports to compare otherwise similar towns. In other words, you can’t compare southern towns to northern ones using this data because of those biases in reporting, but you can compare the rates for the U.S. as a whole from one year to the next.
Finally, in case you don’t know, the crime rate for the U.S. as a whole is of interest – it’s useful in determining the FBI’s budget for the year.
Mr. Alexander Simon
011/022/2011
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Shannon1981
Please take into account the states like SC, where I live and was bashed, that do not have hate crimes laws at all, and, furthermore, many others that do have hate crimes laws do not include sexual orientation and gender identity in those definitions.
My assailants got a bunch of community service and anger management classes in lieu of jail time after pleading down to assault. A hate crime was never even considered. I suspect, due to no uniform national definitions of hate crimes and how they are charged, that these numbers are way off.