Foreword.

In response to Congress' passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 and subsequent acts that amended the directive, the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) Program collects and publishes data on crimes motivated by racial, religious, ethnicity/national-origin, sexual-orientation, and disability bias. In 2001, 9,730 bias-motivated incidents were voluntarily reported by law enforcement agencies nationwide.

From the first year that national hate crime data were published in 1992 until 2000, incidents motivated by racial bias comprised the largest portion of reported hate crime incidents followed by incidents motivated by a religious bias and those motivated by bias against sexual orientation. The fewest number of hate crime incidents resulted from ethnicity or national-origin bias, until the addition of the disability bias in 1997, which then became the lowest portion of reported hate crime incidents.

That distribution changed in 2001, presumably as a result of the heinous incidents that occurred on September 11. For many offenders, the preformed negative opinion, or bias, was directed toward ethnicity/national origin. Consistent with past data, by bias type, law enforcement reported that most incidents in 2001 were motivated by bias against race. However, crime incidents motivated by bias against ethnicity/national origin were the second most frequently reported bias in 2001, more than doubling the number of incidents, offenses, victims, and known offenders from 2000 data. Additionally, the anti-other ethnicity/national origin category quadrupled in incidents, offenses, victims, and known offenders.

Another noticeable increase in 2001 was among religious-bias incidents. Anti-Islamic religion incidents were previously the second least reported, but in 2001, they became the second highest reported among religious-bias incidents (anti-Jewish religion incidents were the highest), growing by more than 1,600 percent over the 2000 volume. In 2001, reported data showed there were 481 incidents made up of 546 offenses having 554 victims of crimes motivated by bias toward the Islamic religion.

Hate crimes touch not only the individual victim, but they also affect the entire group associated with the particular bias motivation. Unfair and inaccurate stereotyping can make victims of all who share the same race, religion, ethnicity or national origin, sexual orientation, or disability. Law enforcement's commitment to hate crime awareness and collecting and reporting data surrounding bias-motivated offenses underscores the notion that valid information is essential in developing tools with which to combat these pernicious crimes.