Hate Crimes - FBI Statistics

This year’s report—Hate Crime Statistics 2007, is now posted online

Overall, 7,624 hate crime incidents involving 9,006 offenses were reported to the FBI—incidents that involved bias towards a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, or disability.

The report goes into a great deal of interesting detail, but here’s a breakdown of some key numbers:

Victims

* 52 percent were targeted because of their race
* 17.1 percent were targeted because of their religious belief
* 15.9 were targeted because of their sexual orientation
* 14.1 were targeted because of their ethnicity/nation origin

Offenses

* Of crimes against persons, nine people were murdered and two were raped
* Intimidation accounted for 47.4 percent of crimes against persons
* Simple assaults accounted for 31.1 percent
* Aggravated assaults accounted for 20.6 percent