2014/12/08 – The FBI on Monday released statistics relating to hate crimes committed in 2013, showing that nearly half of the victims were targeted on the basis of race. Law enforcement agencies reported 5,922 hate crimes motivated by a single bias last year involving 7,230 victims (another six hate crimes involving 12 victims were motivated by multiple biases). Of those 7,230 victims, 49.3 percent were targeted because of the perpetrators’ racial bias, the FBI reports. Another 20.2 percent were victimized because of sexual orientation biases, while nearly 17 percent were targeted because of religious biases. Another 11.4 percent were victimized due to ethnicity bias. This year’s hate crimes report is the first to include bias categories of gender and gender identity, as required by the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act of 2009. The report shows 0.5 percent of victims were targeted because of gender identity while 0.4 percent were targeted because of gender bias. Of the 5,814 known offenders, 52.4 percent were white while 24.3 percent were black, the report shows. Race was unknown for 14.8 percent of the offenders. Among the 2,527 offenders for whom age was identified, most — 68 percent — were 18 or older. The report also shows that nearly a third of hate crimes occurred in or near residences or homes. The report comes on the same day the Justice Department released its long-awaited revised racial profiling guidelines for federal law enforcement. The new guidelines prohibit officers from profiling on the basis of gender, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and general identity, in addition to race and ethnicity.

Source: Stephanie Condon

CBS