U.S. hate crimes up 12% in 2021 – nearly two-thirds were race-related: FBI

Hate crimes in the US increased by 11.6% in 2021 – higher than the FBI initially reported – as more than half of such incidents were race-related, the agency said on Monday.

Police departments across the country reported that 12,411 people were the victims of 10,530 cases of hate crimes reported in 2021, of which a staggering 64.5 percent were related to their ethnicity, origin or race, the FBI said.

According to the FBI, the second highest number of victims, 15.9 percent, was victimized because of their sexual orientation, while 14.1 percent of people were victimized because of their religion.

Another 310 incidents involved multiple biases, according to the agency.

The total number of reported victims of hate crimes jumped 11.7%, from 11,472 in 2020 to 12,822 the following year.

On Monday, the FBI released additional hate crime statistics for 2021, providing more data on the prevalence of such incidents and related arrests nationwide compared to the previous year. Monday’s report supplemented previous FBI data for 2021, which was released in December and included a smaller number of police and law enforcement agencies, the bureau said.

Of the agencies that have released their hate crime statistics, California reported the most crimes for 2021 with 1,872, followed by New York with 810 and New Jersey with 786, the FBI data shows. Delaware reported the fewest offenses at 11.

The types of crimes were divided into crimes against the person and crimes against property. According to the FBI, just over 43 percent of crimes against individuals involved intimidation and 35.5 percent were simple assaults. Twenty percent were aggravated assaults and the rest were rapes – 19 reported offenses were murders and “other”.

Eighteen of all reported crimes were homicides, according to the FBI.

Meanwhile, the FBI said there were 3,817 hate crimes against property, of which 71 percent were described as “acts of destruction/damage/vandalism.”