Foreword.

Sterilized from emotion, hate crime, also called bias crime, is those offenses motivated in part or singularly by personal prejudice against others because of a diversity--race, sexual orientation, religion, ethnicity/national origin, or disability. The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program's responsibility regarding hate crime is to provide a reliable set of statistics through the Hate Crime Data Collection Program. Through this program, law enforcement agencies nationwide voluntarily submit data about hate crimes within their jurisdictions (i.e., the number of incidents, offenses, victims, and offenders) for publication in the annual report, Hate Crime Statistics. Though law enforcement agencies need only report data for one month of a year to be included in this publication, most agencies that participate in the Program submit four quarters of data. In 2000, a total of 91.9 percent of all contributing agencies submitted four quarters of data. All data reported by law enforcement agencies are presented in this publication, free of the nuances that many factions of society impose upon the subject.

The uses for hate crime data vary widely among the different sectors of society. The statistics may assist law enforcement agencies in addressing potentially problematic issues for their particular locales or provide lawmakers with justification for certain legislation. The data may supply the media with credible information or simply show hate crime victims that they are not alone. Analyses of these data can also aid researchers in determining trends in hate crimes. Whatever the use of the statistics may be, the goal of this publication is to enable these data users to create an awareness about hate crime and advance the study of this complex facet of crime.