This is part 3 in my now annual series taking a look at the FBI's Uniform Crime Reports on Hate Crime Statistics with some deeper number crunching (Color charts and tables ahead!!). This analysis looks at these reports since 1997. For the first two:
Part 1: 2007
Part 2: 2008
This year's UCR Hate Crime Report is out and the numbers are for the most part good, though I came across a few troubling items. Details below the fold.
(Preface: please see the note below about the inclusion/exclusion of anti-transgender/anti-transsexual bias incidents. Their seeming exclusion from these numbers is explained.)
The top sheet executive summary its that hate crimes are down for the most part, both total number of incidents and victims. And because of an increase of 3.55% in the population covered by reporting agencies, the rate of incidents and victims shows an even greater drop. There was also a drop in total incidents based on races, religion, sexual orientation and ethnicity, but an increase in incidents against the disabled.
In the sub groups, there was a drop in each With the following exceptions which saw a rise in total number of incidents: Anti-Native American, Anti-Lesbian, Anti-Homosexual (generic), Anti-Physically Disabled, Anti-Mentally Disabled.
As in prior years, I've crunched numbers based on estimates of the proportion of the total population each group constitutes to calculate a incident rate per 1 million group members. See the 2007 diary for a discussion on how the numbers were calculated and the assumptions made.
Here is a look at some of the sub-categories over time. (Anti-Gay, Anti-Lesbian, Anti-Homosexual and Anti-Bisexual combined)
For each of these, the 2009 rate is lower than the 2008 rate, though the rate for Anti-Islamic incidents represents a drop of 1.6% while all others where much greater. For each sub-group in the chart, the 2009 incident rate is the lowest for that group since 2001 except for the Lesbian, Gay and Bisexual community, where the 2005 numbers were lower. The huge spike in 2001 for anti-Islamic hate crimes was almost entirely post 9/11 and since then has contnued to decline, but is still no where near as low as the rate prior to 9/11.
In this second chart, I removed the religion and sexual orientation based incidents and added the other racial sub-groups to show the slight increase in incident rate for hate crimes directed at Native Americans.
This chart shows the thankful decline in all racial/ethnic incident rates over time except for those directed against Native Americans. I can't say whether this is due to better reporting of anti-Native American hate crimes or whether there has, since the late 1990's, been a slight uptick in Anti-Native American hate crimes.
In table form, here are the last four years worth of data for hate crime incidents rate per 1 million group members (for example, a value of 3 for Anti-White means that for every 1,000,000 Anglo, not Hispanic people in the U.S., there were 3 recorded hate bias motivated incidents directed against non-Hispanic Anglos):
| 2009 | 2008 | 2007 | 2006 |
Anti-White | 3.0 | 4.0 | 4.4 | 5.3 |
Anti-Black | 61.1 | 79.7 | 76.2 | 77.2 |
Anti-Native American | 34.3 | 29.5 | 34.5 | 34.6 |
Anti-Asian/Pacific Islander | 9.9 | 11.2 | 15.9 | 15.6 |
Anti-Jewish | 238.4 | 268.6 | 266.0 | 270.8 |
Anti-Islamic | 63.9 | 65.0 | 73.7 | 101.9 |
Anti-Gay & Lesbian | 143.6 | 156.4 | 159.2 | 152.8 |
Anti-Heterosexual | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 | 0.1 |
Anti-Hispanic | 11.5 | 13.9 | 15.2 | 15.3 |
But looking at the total number of incidents or the rate of incidents doesn't give the complete picture. Those raw numbers don't tell you what kind of incidents are occuring. Here is where some deeper number crunching happens. Taking the breakdown of the types of incidents for each sub-group, I've compiled the rates for each sub-group for each type of sub-category of offenses.
| Aggravated Assault | Simple Assault | Intimidation | Other Against Person | Total Against Person | Vandalism | Other Against Property | Total Against Property | Total |
Anti-White | 0.6 | 1.0 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 2.6 | 0.3 | 0.6 | 0.9 | 3.5 |
Anti-Black | 8.3 | 13.6 | 25.0 | 0.1 | 47.1 | 22.9 | 2.8 | 25.7 | 72.9 |
Anti-Native American | 6.9 | 16.3 | 6.3 | 1.6 | 31.1 | 4.2 | 8.4 | 12.7 | 44.3 |
Anti-Asian/Pacific Islander | 1.2 | 3.5 | 3.2 | 0.0 | 7.8 | 3.6 | 0.2 | 3.8 | 11.6 |
Anti-Jewish | 2.3 | 21.0 | 44.0 | 0.0 | 67.3 | 171.8 | 7.4 | 179.2 | 246.8 |
Anti-Islamic | 6.6 | 20.3 | 26.3 | 0.0 | 53.2 | 19.7 | 3.0 | 22.7 | 76.5 |
Anti-Lesbian, Gay & Bisexual | 26.8 | 58.3 | 38.5 | 0.1 | 123.7 | 34.3 | 10.0 | 44.3 | 169.1 |
Anti-Heterosexual | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.0 | 0.1 |
Anti-Hispanic | 3.4 | 3.8 | 4.9 | 0.1 | 12.2 | 2.3 | 1.1 | 3.4 | 15.6 |
Once again, the Jewish and LGB community are the most targeted communities with vandalism accounting for the lion's share of the hate crime incidents directed against those in the Jewish community. In crimes directed against persons, the LGB community has the highest rates of aggravated and simple assaults against them and second in acts of intimidation behind the Jewish community.
Charted out in graphical form:
As in prior years, it is clear that the LGB community is disproportionately the target in cases of aggravated and simple assaults. Hate crimes against Gays and Lesbians are much more likely to be against the person than their property.
The overall rate of hate crime incidents against Gays and Lesbians remains above the low watermark set in 2005, though the rate of incidents against property has fallen slightly below the 2005 rate.
In a breakdown of the rates over time for crimes against the person for gays and lesbians, aggravated assaults are decling from their 2006 high and the rate of intimidation set a low over the last 6 years, but the rate of simple assults is only slightly lower than the high rate mark set last year.
As in previous years, hate crime incidents motivated by an anti-transgender or anti-transsexual bias are not explicitly included. Some of these incidents may get classified under anti-gay, anti-lesbian, anti-homosexual or anti-bisexual, but there has not been an explicit sub-group for such crimes, so their actual inclusion or exclusion in the numbers is unknown. The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr Hate Crimes Protection Act, signed into law in October 2009, modified the Hate Crimes Statistics Act to explicitly include gender identity as a basis for statistics collection. As this UCR covers calendar year 2009 and the modification only made in October, the numbers based on gender identity are not yet a part of the annual UCR report, but will make their first appearance as a category in next year's report on the 2010 calendar year. Next year's report will also take a closer look at hate crimes committed against and by juveniles, data which could prove to be very important in writing new legislation to address bullying in schools, particularly that directed against the LGBT community.