U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs Bureau of Justice Statistics ----------------------------------------------------- This report is one in series. More recent editions may be available. To view a list of all reports in the series go to http://www.bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbse&sid=72 This file is text only without graphics and many of the tables. A Zip archive of the tables in this report in spreadsheet format (.csv) and the full report including tables and graphics in .pdf format are available on BJS website at:http://bjs.gov/index.cfm?ty=pbdetail&iid=4614 ------------------------------------------------------ Special Report Hate Crime Victimization, 2003-2011 Nathan Sandholtz, BJS Intern, Lynn Langton, Ph.D., and Michael Planty, Ph.D., BJS Statisticians 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. Of these hate crimes, victims perceived that the offender was motivated by bias against the victim’s religion in 21% of victimizations. The percentage of hate crimes motivated by religious bias more than doubled in 2007-11, compared to the 10% motivated by religious bias in 2003-06 (figure 1). In comparison, the percentage of hate crimes motivated by racial bias was slightly lower in 2007-11 (54%) than in 2003-06 (63%). The findings from this report came primarily from the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS), which has been collecting data on crimes motivated by hate since 2003. The NCVS and the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) Hate Crime Statistics Program, which are the principal sources of annual information on hate crime in the United States, use the definition of hate crime provided in the Hate Crime Statistics Act (28 U.S.C. § 534). The act defines hate crimes as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” The NCVS measures crimes perceived by victims to be motivated by an offender’s bias against them for belonging to or being associated with a group largely identified by these characteristics. ******************************************************* ************ Highlights ************ * 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%). * About 92% of all hate crimes collected by the NCVS between 2007 and 2011 were violent victimizations. * About a third of hate crime victimizations occurred at or near the victim’s home. * Between 2003-06 and 2007-11, the percentage of hate crime victimizations reported to police declined from 46% to 35%. * In 2007-11, whites, blacks, and Hispanics had similar rates of violent hate crime victimization. ******************************************************* *********************************** Changes to the measurement of hate crime in the NCVS *********************************** Since the release of the previous BJS report on hate crime victimization (Hate Crime, 2003-2009, NCJ 234085, June 2011), BJS has instituted two changes to the measurement of hate crime using NCVS data. Beginning with the 2010 NCVS data, BJS modified the approach for counting high frequency repeat victimizations, or series victimizations. Series victimizations are those that are similar in type but occur with such frequency that a victim is unable to recall each individual event or to describe each event in detail. Survey procedures allow NCVS interviewers to identify and classify these similar victimizations as series victimizations and collect detailed information on only the most recent incident in the series. Prior to the release of the 2010 NCVS data, BJS counted series victimizations as one victimization. In order to capture these events, BJS now counts series victimizations as the number of incidents experienced by the victim, up to a maximum of 10 (see Methodology). This new approach to counting series victimizations impacts trends in the rate of violent hate crime victimization. With the previous approach to counting series victimizations, the rate of violent hate crime victimizations declined slightly from 2008 to 2010 and stabilized from 2010 to 2011 (figure 2). In comparison, when series victimizations are counted up to a maximum of 10 victimizations, the rate of violent hate crime victimizations was stable from 2008 to 2010 and declined slightly from 2010 to 2011. Regardless of the approach used for counting hate crime victimizations, no significant change was observed in the rate of violent hate crime victimization in 2011 compared to 2004. The second change to the measurement of hate crime is the inclusion of gender or gender identity bias in the hate crime definition. In 2009, the passage of the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act made gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation protected categories under federal hate crime statutes. The Hate Crime Statistics Act was also amended to reflect the newly protected categories of sexual orientation, gender, and gender identity. BJS and the FBI have been collecting and reporting on hate crimes motivated by bias against a victim’s sexual orientation since 2003. BJS has also previously reported on hate crimes motivated by gender bias when the victim reported an additional bias motivation (e.g., racial or ethnic bias, as well as gender bias). However, beginning with 2010, BJS began including crimes motivated solely by gender or gender identity bias in the hate crime statistics. The inclusion of crimes motivated solely by gender or gender identity bias did not significantly change the number or rate of hate crime victimizations in 2010 or 2011 (table 1). ******************************************************* Hate crime victimization refers to a single victim or household that experienced a criminal incident believed to be motivated by hate. For violent crimes (rape or sexual assault, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault) and for personal larceny, the count of hate crime victimizations is the number of individuals who experienced a violent hate crime. For crimes against households (burglary, motor vehicle theft, or other theft), each household affected by a hate crime is counted as a single victimization. This report presents NCVS data on the characteristics of hate crimes and hate crime victims from 2003 to 2011. Trend estimates are based on 2-year rolling averages centered on the most recent year. For example, estimates reported for 2011 represent the average estimates for 2010 and 2011. Subgroup estimates are aggregated annual estimates for two periods—2003 to 2006 and 2007 to 2011. This approach increases the reliability and stability of estimates, which facilitates comparing estimates over time. The report also presents comparisons between the NCVS and the UCR in terms of overall trends in hate crime victimization and the type of bias that motivated the crime. ******************************************* As a percentage of total violent crime, violent hate crime was greater in 2007-11 (4%) than in 2003-06 (3%) ******************************************* Overall, the total number of hate crime victimizations remained stable from 2004 to 2011 (table 2). Across the periods from 2003-06 and 2007-11, no change was detected in the annual average number of total, violent, or property hate crime victimizations (table 3). However, violent hate crimes accounted for a higher percentage of all nonfatal violent victimizations in the 2007-11 period (4%) than in the 2003-06 period (3%). ********************************************************* ************************************* Violent victimizations accounted for 92% of all hate crimes in 2007-11 ************************************* The percentage of hate crimes that involved violence was greater in 2007-11 (92%) than in 2003-06 (84%) (table 4). Property crimes accounted for a lower percentage of hate crime victimizations in 2007-11 (8%), compared to 2003- 06 (15%). The lower percentage of property hate crime victimizations in 2003-06 was driven by a decline in hate- related burglaries. Hate-related burglaries accounted for 2% of all hate crimes during 2007-11 and 9% of all hate crimes during 2003-06. While a greater percentage of hate crimes were violent victimizations in 2007-11 than in 2003-06, the opposite was true for nonhate crimes. The percentage of nonhate crimes that were violent victimizations declined from 2003-06 to 2007-11 (not shown in a table). Overall, from 2003 through 2011, violent crimes accounted for a greater percentage of hate crimes than nonhate crimes (figure 3). ************************************* The percentage of violent hate crimes resulting in victim injury declined over time ************************************* In 2007-11, the offender had a weapon in at least 25% of violent hate crime victimizations, and the victim sustained an injury in about 17% of violent hate crime victimizations (table 5). No differences were detected in the percentage of hate crime victimizations in which the offender was known to have a weapon between the 2003-06 and 2007-11 periods. However, the victim sustained an injury in a slightly higher percentage of violent hate crime victimizations in 2003-06 (25%) than in 2007-11 (17%). ************************************* About 30% of hate crime victimizations occurred at or near the victim’s home ************************************* The locations in which hate crimes occurred did not change significantly from 2003-06 to 2007-11 (table 6). During both periods, about a third of hate crime victimizations occurred at or near the victim’s home. In 2007-11, about 24% of hate crime victimizations occurred in public places (such as parking lots, on the street, or on public transportation) and about 19% occurred at school. From 2003 to 2011, the overall percentage of violent nonhate victimizations (36%) that occurred at or near the victim’s home was greater than the percentage of violent hate victimizations (27%) that occurred at or near the victim’s home (figure 4). In comparison, the percentage of violent hate crimes that occurred in commercial places (16%) and at school (22%) was greater than the percentage of nonhate crimes occurring in these locations. A similar percentage of hate (24%) and nonhate (22%) violent crimes occurred in parking lots, on the street, or on public transportation. ************************************* The percentage of hate crimes reported to police declined over time ************************************* The percentage of all hate crime victimizations reported to police declined from 46% in 2003-06 to 35% in 2007-11 (table 7). The percentage of violent hate crimes reported to police was 36% in 2007-11. The decline in the percentage of total hate crimes reported to police was partially attributed to a drop in reporting by persons other than the victim, such as other household members or bystanders. In 2003-06, someone other than the victim reported 21% percent of hate crime victimizations, compared to 11% in 2007-11. About a quarter of all hate crime victimizations were reported to police by the victim, which was consistent across both time periods. The percentage of violent hate crime victimizations that resulted in the victim signing a complaint remained stable at about 10% from 2003-06 to 2007-11. However, the percentage of violent hate crimes that resulted in an arrest declined from 10% in 2003-06 to 4% in 2007-11. ************************************* From 2003-06 to 2007-11, serious violent hate crimes reported to police declined ************************************* The percentage of serious violent and property hate crimes reported to police declined from 2003-06 to 2007-11 (figure 5). However, the percentage of reported simple assault hate crimes did not change significantly across the two periods. The percentage of all types of nonhate crimes reported to police remained stable across both periods. In 2007-11, the percentage of hate violent crimes reported to police was lower than the percentage of violent nonhate crimes reported. No differences were observed in the percentage of serious violent and simple assault hate and nonhate crimes reported to police in 2003-06. The percentage of property hate crimes reported to police was greater than the percentage of nonhate property crimes reported in 2003- 06, but a similar percentage of hate and nonhate property crime was reported to police in 2007-11. ****************************************************** The percentage of violent hate crime victimizations that were unreported due to a belief that police could not or would not help increased from 003-06 to 2007-11 ****************************************************** The NCVS asks violent hate crime victims who did not report the crime to police why the crime was not reported. The reasons victims described as most important to them varied between 2003-06 and 2007-11. In 2003-06, the most common reason for not reporting the violent hate crime to police was that it was dealt with in another way (e.g., reported to an official other than law enforcement) or that the victim considered it a private or personal matter (35%). The percentage of victims who dealt with the crime another way or considered it a private matter declined in 2007-11 to 23% (figure 6). In 2003-06, 14% of hate crime victims said they did not report the crime because they believed that the police could not or would not help, compared to 24% in 2007-11. A slightly higher percentage of violent hate crime victims stated that fear of reprisal or getting the offender in trouble was the most important reason for not reporting the crime to the police in 2007-11 (15%) than in 2003-06 (9%). ****************************************************** Whites, blacks, and Hispanics had similar rates of violent hate crime victimization in 2007-11 ****************************************************** In 2003-06, Hispanics (1.4 per 1,000) experienced a higher rate of violent hate crime victimization than white non- Hispanics (0.8 per 1,000) and black non-Hispanics (0.5 per 1,000) (table 8). In 2007-11, the rate of violent hate crime victimization was similar for all three groups. During both time periods, males consistently had a higher rate of violent hate crime victimization than females, and persons under age 18 experienced higher rates of victimization than adults age 18 or older. Persons in households with an income of under $25,000 per year consistently experienced a higher rate of violent hate crime victimization than persons in higher income categories in both time periods. ****************************************************** The percentage of violent hate crimes committed by one offender declined from 70% in 2003-06 to 53% in 2007-11 ****************************************************** The percentage of violent hate crimes committed by two or three offenders increased from 11% during 2003-06 to 25% during 2007-11, while the percentage committed by a single offender declined across the two time periods (table 9). The percentage of violent hate crime committed by a group of four or more offenders remained relatively stable. The percentage of violent hate crime victims who perceived the offender to be white increased from 37% in 2003-06 to 53% in 2007-11. The age of offenders and the relationship between the victim and offender remained relatively unchanged across the two time periods. In 2007-11, about 46% of violent hate crime victims reported that the offender was a stranger, compared to 45% in 2003-06. ****************************************************** Police records indicate that hate crime incidents declined after a period of relative stability ****************************************************** According to the FBI’s UCR hate crime data collection, 1,944 law enforcement agencies reported 6,222 hate crime incidents involving 7,713 victims in 2011. The remaining 87% of agencies that participated in the Hate Crime Statistics Program reported no hate crimes in their jurisdictions (not shown in a table). Similar to the NCVS, the UCR showed a decline in the number of hate crime victimizations known to the police in 2011, compared to 2003. The number of hate crime victimizations known to the police declined by 15%, from 9,100 hate crime victimizations in 2003 to 7,700 in 2011 (figure 7). ****************************************************** From 2003 to 2011, an average of seven hate crime homicides occurred each year ****************************************************** According to the UCR Hate Crime Reporting Program, four people were victims of hate crime homicides (murder or non- negligent manslaughter) in 2011 (not shown in table). Since a high of 14 homicides in 2003, the number of hate crime homicides ranged from three to nine victims each year between 2004 and 2011. This was an average of six homicides per year. ****************************************************** Property crimes accounted for 39% of hate crimes recorded in the UCR and 14% of hate crimes reported to police in the NCVS ****************************************************** From 2003 to 2011, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, and simple assault accounted for 32% of hate crimes reported to the UCR, compared to about 86% of hate crimes reported to police in the NCVS (table 10). Intimidation, a crime classification not recognized in the NCVS, accounted for 28% of the UCR hate crimes. About 39% of hate crime victimizations collected by the UCR were property crimes, such as burglary, theft, and vandalism. Vandalism, another crime not captured through the NCVS, accounted for about 86% of the UCR’s property hate crimes (not shown in table). ****************************************************** Offenders targeted victims because of racial bias against the victim in more than half of hate crime victimizations reported to the UCR ****************************************************** Similar to NCVS data, UCR data indicated that more than 50% of hate crime victims known to the police were targeted because of an offender’s racial bias (figure 8). In both data collections, the percentage of hate crimes motivated by racial bias declined from 2003-06 to 2007-11. In 2007-11, UCR and NCVS data showed a similar percentage of hate crime victims targeted due to bias against religion and sexual orientation bias. The percentage of hate crimes motivated by the victim’s disability and the victim’s ethnicity differed between the UCR and the NCVS. In 2007-11, the UCR identified about 1% of hate crime victimizations as motivated by bias against a victim’s disability, compared to 14% identified in the NCVS. Similarly, bias against the victim’s ethnicity was the motivation for 13% of hate crimes in the UCR, compared to 30% of hate crimes in the NCVS. One potential reason for the differences between the two sources is that while 60% of victims surveyed by the NCVS reported multiple perceived types of bias against them (not shown in a table), in the UCR about 0.1% of hate crime victims were recorded as being targeted for multiple sources of bias. ************* Methodology ************* National Crime Victimization Survey *********************************** The National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS) is an annual data collection conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau for the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). The NCVS collects information on nonfatal crimes, whether or not reported to the police, against persons age 12 or older in a nationally representative sample of household in the United States. Survey results are based on data gathered from residents living throughout the United States, including persons living in group quarters, such as dormitories, rooming houses, and religious group dwellings. The survey excludes personnel living in military barracks and persons living in institutional settings, such as correctional or hospital facilities. For more detail, see the Survey Methodology for Criminal Victimization in the United States, 2008, NCJ 231173, BJS website, May 2011. Victim self-reports capture information about the number and characteristics of victimizations reported and not reported to law enforcement each year. Hate crime victimizations are based on victims’ perceptions of the offenders’ motivations. Victims provide evidence of the hate motivation by words, symbols, and actions used by the offenders. Weighting adjustments for estimating household victimization ************************************* In 2011, about 79,800 households and 143,120 individuals age 12 or older were interviewed for the NCVS. The response rate was 90% for households and 88% of eligible individuals. Victimizations that occurred outside of the United States were excluded from this report. Estimates in this report use data from the 1994 to 2011 NCVS data files. These files can be weighted to produce annual estimates of victimization for persons age 12 or older living in U.S. households. Because the NCVS relies on a sample rather than a census of the entire U.S. population, weights are designed to inflate sample point estimates to known population totals and to compensate for survey nonresponse and other aspects of the sample design. and household weights. Person weights provide an estimate of the population represented by each person in the sample. Household weights provide an estimate of the total U.S. household population. Both household and person weights, after proper adjustment, are also typically used to form the denominator in calculations of crime rates. Victimization weights used in this analysis account for the number of persons present during an incident and for repeat victims of series incidents. The weight counts series incidents as the actual number of incidents reported by the victim, up to a maximum of 10 incidents. Series victimizations are similar in type but occur with such frequency that a victim is unable to recall each individual event or describe each event in detail. Survey procedures allow NCVS interviewers to identify and classify these similar victimizations as series victimizations and to collect detailed information on only the most recent incident in the series. In 2010, about 3% of all victimizations were series incidents. Weighting series incidents as the number of incidents up to a maximum of 10 incidents produces more reliable estimates of crime levels, while the cap at 10 minimizes the effect of extreme outliers on the rates. Additional information on the series enumeration is detailed in the report Methods for Counting High Frequency Repeat Victimizations in the National Crime Victimization Survey, NCJ 237308, BJS website, April 2012. Year-to-year trend estimates are based on 2-year rolling averages centered on the most recent year. For example, estimates reported for 2011 represent the average estimates for 2010 and 2011. For other tables in this report, aggregate data for the time from 2003 through 2006, and 2007 through 2011 are the focus. These methods of analysis improve the reliability and stability of comparisons over time. Standard error computations **************************** Anytime national estimates are derived from a sample rather than the entire population, as is the case with the NCVS, caution is warranted when drawing conclusions about the size of one population estimate in comparison to another or about whether a time series of population estimates is changing. Estimates based on responses from a sample of the population each have some degree of sampling error. The sampling error, or margin of error, of an estimate depends on several factors, including the amount of variation in the responses, the size and representativeness of the sample, and the size of the subgroup for which the estimate is computed. One measure of the sampling error associated with an estimate is the standard error. The standard error can vary from one estimate to the next. In general, a smaller standard error provides a more reliable approximation of the true value than an estimate with a higher standard error. Estimates with relatively large standard errors are associated with less precision and reliability and should be interpreted with caution. The coefficient of variation (CV) is a measure of an estimate’s reliability. The CV is the ratio of the standard error to the estimate. In this report, the CV was calculated for all estimates. In cases where the CV was greater than 50% or the estimate was based on 10 or fewer sample cases, the estimate was noted with a “!” symbol (interpret data with caution; estimate based on 10 or fewer sample cases, or coefficient of variation is greater than 50%). A statistical test is used to determine whether differences in means or percentages are statistically significant once sampling error is taken into account. Comparisons made in the text were tested for statistical significance at the p < .05 level to ensure that the differences were larger than might be expected due to sampling variation. Significance testing calculations were conducted at BJS using statistical programs developed specifically for the NCVS by the U.S. Census Bureau. These programs take into consideration many aspects of the complex NCVS sample design when calculating estimates. Standard errors for average annual estimates were calculated based on the ratio of the sums of victimizations and respondents across years. Many of the variables examined in this report may be related to one another and to other variables not included in the analyses. Complex relationships among variables were not fully explored in this report and warrant more extensive analysis. Readers are cautioned not to draw causal inferences based on the results presented. Methodological changes to the NCVS in 2006 ******************************************* Methodological changes implemented in 2006 impacted the total violent crime estimates for that year to an extent that they were considered to be not comparable to estimates from other years. Evaluation of 2007 and later data from the NCVS conducted by BJS and the Census Bureau have found a high degree of confidence that estimates for 2007, 2008, and 2009 are consistent with and comparable to those for 2005 and previous years. The reports, Criminal Victimization, 2006, NCJ 219413, December 2007; Criminal Victimization, 2007, NCJ 224390, December 2008; Criminal Victimization, 2008, NCJ 227777, September 2009; Criminal Victimization, 2009, NCJ 231327, October 2010; Criminal Victimization, 2010, NCJ 235508, September 2011; and Criminal Victimization, 2011, NCJ 239437, October 2012, are available on the BJS website. Although caution is warranted when comparing data from 2006 to other years, the aggregation of multiple years of data in this report diminishes the potential variation between 2006 and other years. In general, findings do not change significantly if data for 2006 are excluded. Uniform Crime Reports (UCR) **************************** The UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program captures information about the types of bias that motivate hate crimes, the nature of the offenses, and some information about the victims and offenders by attaching the collection of hate crime statistics to the established UCR data collection procedures. The hate crime data presented here comprise a subset of information that law enforcement agencies submit to the UCR Program. Crimes reported to the FBI involve those motivated by biases based on race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnicity/national origin, and disability. The 2012 UCR data collection will allow the reporting of crimes motivated by gender and gender identity bias, as well as crimes committed by and directed against juveniles. The victim of a hate crime may be an individual, business, institution, or society as a whole. In UCR data, law enforcement specifies the number of offenders and, when possible, the race of the offender or offenders as a group. Agencies that participated in the Hate Crime Statistics Program in 2011 represented nearly 285 million residents, or 92.3% percent of the nation’s population. Their jurisdictions covered 49 states and the District of Columbia. Hate crime legislation *********************** On April 23, 1990, Congress passed the Hate Crime Statistics Act, which requires the Attorney General to collect data “about crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity.” The Attorney General delegated the responsibilities of developing the procedures for implementing, collecting, and managing hate crime data to the director of the FBI, who in turn assigned the tasks to the UCR Program. Under the direction of the Attorney General and with the cooperation and assistance of many local and state law enforcement agencies, the UCR Program created a hate crime data collection to comply with the congressional mandate. In September 1994, lawmakers amended the Hate Crime Statistics Act to include bias against persons with disabilities in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994. The FBI started gathering data for the additional bias type on January 1, 1997. The Church Arson Prevention Act, which was signed into law in July 1996, removed the sunset clause from the original statute and mandated that the collection of hate crime data become a permanent part of the UCR Program. In 2009, Congress further amended the Hate Crime Statistics Act by passing the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crime Prevention Act. The amendment includes the collection of data for crimes motivated by bias against a particular gender and gender identity, as well as for crimes committed by, and crimes directed against, juveniles. The FBI is currently making plans to implement changes to collect these data. The Hate Crime Statistics Act can be accessed at http://www.ssa.gov/OP_Home/comp2/D-USC-28.html. ************************************************* The Bureau of Justice Statistics is the statistics agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. William J. Sabol is acting director. This report was written by Nathan Sandholtz, Lynn Langton, and Michael Planty. Erika Harrell verified the report. Catherine Bird and Jill Thomas edited the report, and Barbara Quinn produced the report under the supervision of Doris J. James. March 2013, NCJ 241291 ************************************************* ************************************************* Office of Justice Programs Innovation * Partnerships * Safer Neighborhoods www.ojp.usdoj.gov ************************************************** ******************* 3/13/13/2:56pm/JER *******************