New Report on Hate Crime Victimization from 2003-2011

Hate Crime Victimization, 2003-2011

Yesterday, the Bureau of Justice Statistics released a new reported titled, "Hate Crime Victimization, 2003-2011." The report "Presents annual counts and rates of hate crime victimization that occurred from 2003 through 2011, using data from the National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The report examines changes over time in hate crime victimizations, including the type of bias that motivated the hate crime, the type of crime, whether the incident was reported to police, and characteristics of the incident, offender, and victim. In addition, the report compares characteristics of hate crime and nonhate crime victimization. NCVS estimates are supplemented by data from official police reports of hate crime from the FBI's Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Hate Crime Statistics Program."

Highlights from the report include:

• From 2007 to 2011, an estimated annual average of 259,700 nonfatal violent and property hate crime victimizations occurred against persons age 12 or older residing in U.S. households.
• Across the periods from 2003-06 and 2007-11, there was no change in the annual average number of total, violent, or property hate crime victimizations.
• The percentage of hate crimes motivated by religious bias more than doubled between 2003-06 and 2007-11 (from 10% to 21%), while the percentage motivated by racial bias dropped slightly (from 63% to 54%).
• Violent hate crime accounted for a higher percentage of all nonfatal violent crime in 2007-11 (4%), compared to 2003-06 (3%).
• Between 2003-06 and 2007-11, the percentage of hate crime victimizations reported to police declined from 46% to 35%.

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