According to the Hate Crime Statistics Act, hate crimes are criminal acts motivated by bias against the victim due to his or her race, ethnicity, gender or gender identity, sexual orientation, religion or disability. Around half the hate crimes in the US are not reported to law enforcement and hence are not documented in the FBI’s Uniform Crime Reports (UCR). However, the US Bureau of Justice National Crime Victimization Surveys (NCVS) supplement the FBI stats and provide a more comprehensive picture of hate crime frequency, victims, offenders and trends. For instance, per the Bureau of Justice Statistics report, “Hate Crime Victimization, 2004-2015”:
U.S. residents experienced an average of 250,000 hate crime victimizations each year from 2004-2015.
During this period, violent hate crime victimization occurred at an annual rate of about 0.7 per 1,000 persons age 12 or older.
The majority (99%) of victims cited offenders' use of hate language as evidence of a hate crime.
During the 5-year period from 2011-15, racial bias was the most common perceived motivation for hate crime (48%)., followed by ethnicity (35%), gender (29%), sexual orientation (22%), religion (17%), and disability (16%).
More recently, hate crimes appear to be decreasing overall, while victims are increasingly reporting these crimes to law enforcement. For instance, in 2017 there were 197,700 hate crimes in the US, compared to 287,700 in 2009. Of these, 55% were reported to law enforcement in 2017 and just 40% were reported to law enforcement in 2009. The rest were documented in the victimization surveys. As the following chart shows, hate crimes related to gender and sexual orientation bias remain underreported to law enforcement:
And this chart shows who the victims and offenders are for violent hate crimes:
Source: “Hate Crime Victimization, 2004-2015” by Lynn Langton and Madeline Masucci/ Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report NCJ 250653. June 29, 2017
Unfortunately I couldn’t find victim survey reports documenting which offenders were targeting which victims, linking offender characteristics such as gender, race and ethnicity to victim characteristics. Nor could I find survey data on offender and victim characteristics by type of bias, e.g., religious, racial, etc. For example, what are the characteristics of offenders who commit race-based hate crimes and what are the characteristics of their victims? In other words, who is doing what to whom? This information is especially important to get a better handle on hate crimes that are underreported to law enforcement, such as gender-based hate crimes. You can’t fix a problem you don’t understand and when it comes to societal problems, you can’t understand a problem without good data*.
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* Since victims provide information on type of bias and offender characteristics, the data is obviously available in raw form. I’ve just never seen a survey report or analysis that links victim and offender characteristics with type of bias.
References:
“Hate Crime Victimization, 2004-2015” by Lynn Langton and Madeline Masucci/ Bureau of Justice Statistics, Report NCJ 250653. June 29, 2017
“Hate Crime History in VA, Current Legal Framework, Enforcement and Data” by Barbara Oudekerk/Bureau of Justice Statistics Briefing prepared for the Virginia Advisory Committee, U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, March 29, 2019