New data collected by the Federal Bureau of Investigation ( FBI ) appears to show an increase in bias-motivated crimeshate crimeson the basis of sexual orientation in 2008.Crimes on the basis of religious prejudice may also be up sharply, although crimes based on racial prejudicewhich still account for more than half of the 7,783 bias-related incidents reportedappeared to decline slightly.
Attached to the findings was an FBI note cautioning against identifying trends from year to yearthe data is not collected systematically and can be subjectively reported. Because the number of agencies which voluntarily report to the Bureau changes from year to year, so can the numbers which it compiles in its reportsand the FBI cautioned that the apparent increase might be attributable to more agencies reporting than in previous years.
The data compiled showed an overall 2 percent increase in bias-motivated incidents from 2007 to 2008, nationwide. The number of crime victimsclassified as individuals, institutions, and propertywas up slightly from 9,535 to 9,691.
The FBI collects data on bias-motivated crimes on the basis of race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity, and disability. Under federal hate-crimes legislation recently signed by President Barack Obama, the bureau will begin to collect statistics on crimes against transgender people.
In Chicago, the FBI reported 31 total incidents: 13 on the basis of race, seven each motivated by anti-gay or anti-religious animus, and four on the basis of ethnicity. Houston, Texasonly slightly smaller than Chicagoreported 28 total incidents; Los Angeles, the next largest U.S. city, reported 168.
The FBI sorts hate-crimes data into three categories: incidents, offenses and victims. Incidents are defined as the overall situation in which one or more legal offense can occur. The FBI tracks 11 types of potential bias-motivated offenses, including rape, assault, robbery and vandalism.
The parallel tracking methods also make it difficult to identify trends in the data. For instance, though the number of legal offenses on the basis of anti-gay prejudice were up nearly 11 percent in 2008, the number of discrete incidents appeared to increase only 2.5 percent.
And though the number of racially-motivated offenses declined slightlyby half a percentthe number of incidents rose more than three percent.
Moreover, the numbers are at odds with those released by other organizations which collect this sort of data. Earlier this year, for instance, the Chicago Commission on Human Relations said that it had collected information on 72 hate crimes in Chicago in 2008. And the Center on Halsted's Anti-Violence Project reported 125 incidents of anti-gay crime alone in 2008.
The Commission on Human Relation's data is collected through the Chicago Police Department; and the COH program is part of the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs ( NCAVP ) . In a press release earlier this year, the NCAVP said that the reason for the discrepancy between its data and the FBI's was that the FBI relies on local law enforcement agencies only, while the NCAVP looks at victim service organization data.
Rick Garcia, director of public policy for Equality Illinois, said that the FBI numbers were underreported. "Oftentimes," Garcia said, "victims of hate crimes are reluctant to report it. … It's embarrassing and you don't want people to know"particularly when that means coming out to family, for instance, to whom a victim is not out.
He also said that certain jurisdictionshe used locales in southern Illinois as an examplecan also be "lax" about reporting hate crimes. Those crimes, then, are doubly underreported. "Whenever I see hate-crime statistics," Garcia said, " [ I ] multiply it by 10."
"It's extremely important for these numbers to be collected," he said, "but the reality is that hate crimes are underreported."
Bill Dobbs, a longtime gay activist and civil libertarian, downplayed the usefulness of hate crimes statistics. "These are crime incident statistics," said Dobbs, who is based in New York City. "And what crime incident statistics do is that they activate very deep emotions in people."
Dobbs said that reports like the FBI's contain "raw crime statistics" that don't take into account the entirety of the legal process that follows the alleged crime. "Was there a police investigation? Was there an indictment?" Removing the crimes from their contexts, Dobbs said, "feeds a climate of anxiety about crime."
In terms of the broader community response to hate crimes, Dobbs criticized the emphasis on enhanced criminal penalties supported by some LGBT groups, and included in most hate-crimes legislation. ( Chicago, for instance, considers hate crime to be a Class 4 felony; statewide, "hate" can be considered an aggravating factor in sentencing. )
"You can't solve a social problem with law and order," he said. "I think we have to start being smarter about this. There's a difference between vengeance and justice."