Sikhs, Jews most targeted for hate crimes: FBI

The two communities were victims of more than half of 1,005 incidents related to religion reported in 2021

Sikhs and Jews were main targets of hate crimes in the United States as a total of 1,005 incidents related to religion were reported in 2021, according to FBI’s latest hate crime statistics.

The two communities were victims of more than half such incidents with anti-Jewish incidents topping with 31.9% followed by 21.3% anti-Sikh incidents. Anti-Islamic incidents numbered 9.5% and anti-Catholic incidents 6.1%.

Read: FBI reports over 7,000 hate crimes in America in 2021 (December 15, 2022)

Overall, law enforcement agencies reported 7,262 total incidents and 9,024 victims, demonstrating that hate crimes remain a concern for communities across the country, according to the annual compilation of bias-motivated incidents released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

According to this year’s data, 64.8% of victims were targeted because of the offenders’ bias toward race/ethnicity/ancestry, which continues to be the largest bias motivation category.

Anti-Black or African American hate crimes continue to be the largest bias incident category, with 63.2% of all single-bias incidents in 2021.

Additionally, anti-Asian incidents represented 4.3% of incidents reported in 2021. The other largest categories of hate crimes include anti-Hispanic or Latino incidents, with 6.1% of incidents, and anti-White incidents, with 13.4% of incidents.

Read: Hate Crimes against Indian Americans continue to rise: FBI (September 9, 2021)

Together, incidents related to sexual orientation and gender identity represented 19.7% of all single-bias incidents reported in 2022. Also, incidents related to religion comprised 14.2% of incidents, disability comprised 1.8%, and gender comprised 1.0%.

As the overall number of agencies reporting decreased to 11,834, from 15,138 in 2021, data cannot reliably be compared across years, FBI said.

This is the first year the annual hate crimes statistics are reported entirely through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). As a result of the shift to NIBRS-only data collection, law enforcement agency participation in submitting all crime statistics, including hate crimes, fell significantly from 2020 to 2021.

Law enforcement agencies that did not transition to reporting crime data through NIBRS were not able to submit hate crime statistics to the FBI.

Read: Sikhs Remain Among Most Targeted Religious Groups for Hate Crimes in US: FBI (February 23, 2023)

Several of the nation’s largest law enforcement agencies, as well as some states, did not make the transition to NIBRS in time to submit data prior to the reporting deadline, and are not included in the 2021 reported totals.

As more agencies transition to the NIBRS data collection with continued support from the Justice Department, hate crime statistics in coming years will provide a richer and more complete picture of hate crimes nationwide, FBI said.