Federal Data on Hate Crimes in the United States
Federal Data on Hate Crimes in the United
March 22, 2021
States
Nathan James
A number of recent and high-profile crimes where the offenders’ actions appeared to be
Analyst in Crime Policy
motivated by their bias or animosity towards a particular race, ethnicity, religion, sex,
sexual orientation, or gender identity has contributed to a perception that hate crimes are
Emily J. Hanson
on the rise in the United States. These incidents might also generate interest among
Analyst in Social Policy
policymakers about how the federal government collects data on hate crimes committed
in the United States.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started its Hate Crime Statistics program
pursuant to the requirement in the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HSCA, P.L. 101-275) that the Department of Justice
(DOJ) collect and report data on crimes that “manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender and gender
identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including where appropriate the crimes of murder,
non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape; aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation; arson; and
destruction, damage or vandalism of property.” In addition to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics program, DOJ also
collects data on hate crime victimizations through the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS’) National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS). The NCVS measures self-reported criminal victimizations including those
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 the characteristics outlined in the HSCA.
Scholars, advocates, and members of the media have pointed out that there is a significant disparity between the
number of hate crimes reported by the FBI each year and the number of hate crime victimizations reported by
BJS. This has led some to criticize the hate crime data published by the FBI as an undercount of the number of
hate crimes committed in the United States each year. However, this statistics gap can be partial y explained by
the different measures and methodologies utilized by the FBI and BJS to collect these data. For example, the FBI
only reports on crimes that have been reported to the police, while BJS collects reports of criminal victimizations
that may or may not meet the statutory definition of a hate crime and may or may not have been reported to the
police. There are a number of reasons why some victims do not report their victimization to the police, including
fear of reprisal, not wanting the offender to get in trouble, believing that police would not or could not do
anything to help, and believing the crime to be a personal issue or too trivial to report.
There are also several reasons why a hate crime that was reported to the police might not be subsequently reported
to the FBI for their Hate Crime Statistics program. Deciding whether a crime meets the statutory definition of a
hate crime requires law enforcement agencies to investigate al egations of hate crime motivations before making a
final determination. Reporting by law enforcement agencies to the FBI might be hampered by the fact that some
law enforcement agencies do not have the training necessary to investigate potential bias-motivated offenses
effectively. In addition, differing definitions between the FBI and state statutes as to what constitutes a hate crime
generate confusion as to which standard should be used to determine whether a hate crime occurred and should be
reported.
The FBI transitioned to the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) as of January 1, 2021, and no
longer accepts non-NIBRS compliant data from law enforcement agencies. Policymakers might have an interest
in how NIBRS differs from the FBI’s current hate crime reporting program and whether full participation in
NIBRS might improve the quality and completeness of federal hate crime data. However, like the FBI’s current
crime reporting program, participation in the NIBRS program is voluntary, and policymakers might consider steps
Congress could take to promote wide-scale adoption of NIBRS.
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Contents
The Hate Crime Statistics Act ........................................................................................... 1
Federal Hate Crime Data .................................................................................................. 2
Hate Crime Statistics Program ..................................................................................... 2
National Crime Victimization Survey ........................................................................... 3
Differences in the Two National Measures of Hate Crimes .................................................... 5
Are Hate Crimes Underreported to the FBI by Law Enforcement? .......................................... 6
Improving Hate Crime Data: Considerations for Policymakers ............................................... 9
Figures
Figure 1. Number of Law Enforcement Agencies Participating in the FBI’s Hate Crime
Statistics Program, 1996-2019 ........................................................................................ 7
Tables
Table 1. Comparison of the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program and the National Crime
Victimization Survey .................................................................................................... 4
Contacts
Author Information ....................................................................................................... 11
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Federal Data on Hate Crimes in the United States
he United States has recently experienced a series of high-profile violent crimes where the
offenders’ actions appeared to be motivated by their bias or animosity towards a particular
T race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. For example, shootings
at synagogues in Pittsburgh, PA, and Poway, CA; a driver speeding his car into protestors at a
“Unite the Right” ral y in Charlottesvil e, VA; a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, where the
shooter al egedly said he was targeting “Mexicans” and espoused concerns about the “invasion”
of the United States by immigrants; and reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans during
the Coronavirus pandemic contribute to a perception that hate crimes are on the rise in the United
States. The salience of these events and how they are covered in the media might also contribute
to the perception that there is a growing number of hate crimes (also known as bias crimes or
bias-motivated offenses) being perpetrated in communities across the country.1 Policymakers
might turn to hate crime data collected by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to understand if there
has actual y been an increase in hate crimes in the United States and, if so, the nature of the
increase. Policymakers might also utilize these same data to craft a policy response to hate crimes
that is grounded in the data and conduct oversight of the federal government’s efforts to combat
these crimes.
This report begins with an overview of federal sources of data on hate crimes. This includes a
brief overview of the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA, P.L. 101-275), which requires DOJ to
collect and report data on hate crimes, and the two systems DOJ employs to col ect these data: the
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Hate Crime Statistics Program and the Bureau of
Justice Statistics’ (BJS’) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The report then discusses
two salient issues regarding hate crime statistics: the large difference between the number of hate
crimes reported by the FBI and the number of hate crime victimizations reported by BJS, and
concerns about law enforcement agencies underreporting hate crimes to the FBI. The report
concludes with a discussion of whether the wide-scale adoption of the FBI’s National Incident
Based Reporting System (NIBRS) might serve as a means of improving federal hate crime data.
The Hate Crime Statistics Act
The HCSA requires DOJ to collect and report data on crimes that “manifest evidence of prejudice
based on race, gender and gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity,
including where appropriate the crimes of murder, non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape;
aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation; arson; and destruction, damage or vandalism of
property.” Congress required DOJ to collect these data because, at the time, few states collected
data on hate crimes and there were no national data.2 Policymakers believed that national data
would reveal the scope of the problem and provide a basis for more effective law enforcement
efforts to address hate crimes.3
Over the years since the HCSA was enacted, Congress has expanded the definition of what
constitutes a hate crime for data collection purposes. The act initial y required DOJ to collect data
1 For example, research suggests that increased media coverage of school shootings after a high -profile incident can
lead people to believe that school shootings occur with more frequency than they actually do. See Glenn W. Muschert,
“Research in School Shootings,” Sociology Compass, vol. 1, no. 1 (2007), pp. 60-80; and H. Jaymi Elsass, Jaclyn
Schidkraut, and Mark C. Stafford, “Studying School Shootings: Challenges and Considerations for Research,”
Am erican Journal of Crim inal Justice, vol. 14 (2016), pp. 444-464.
2 U.S. Congress, House Committee on the Judiciary, Hate Crime Statistics Act, report to accompany H.R. 1048, 101st
Cong., 1st sess., June 23, 1989, H.Rept. 101-109, p. 2; U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Hate Crim e
Statistics Act, report to accompany S. 419, 101st Cong., 1st sess., May 1, 1989, S.Rept. 101-21, p. 3 (hereinafter, “ House
Judiciary Committee report on the Hate Crime Statistics Act”).
3 House Judiciary Committee report on the Hate Crime Statistics Act, p. 3 .
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on hate crimes based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. In 2009, Congress
amended the act to require DOJ to collect data on hate crimes based on the victims’ gender or
gender identity (P.L. 111-84) or disability (P.L. 103-322). P.L. 111-84 also required DOJ to collect
and report data on hate crimes committed by and against juveniles.
The HCSA initial y included a sunset provision that would have ended the requirement for DOJ
to collect hate crime data after 1994. However, the Church Arson Prevention Act (P.L. 104-155)
removed that provision.
Federal Hate Crime Data
To meet the requirements of the HCSA and subsequent amendments, DOJ collects and reports
data on hate crimes that occur in the United States through two sources: the Hate Crime Statistics
program and the NCVS.
Hate Crime Statistics Program
DOJ fulfil s the HCSA’s requirement by collecting supplemental data on hate crimes through the
FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. The Hate Crime Statistics Program collects
data about hate crime offenders’ bias motivations for the set of offenses already reported to the
UCR program.4 Under the Hate Crime Statistics Program, the victim of a hate crime can be an
individual, a business, an institution, or society as a whole.
Hate Crime Statistics Program data is collected and reported to the FBI by law enforcement
agencies across the country. Agency participation in the Hate Crime Statistics Program, like the
UCR program, is voluntary but most agencies participate. In 2019, approximately 15,600 law
enforcement agencies in al 50 states and the District of Columbia participated in the Hate Crime
Statistics Program.5 The agencies that participated represented jurisdictions that include
approximately 305 mil ion people.6 For a point of comparison, in 2008 there were a reported
17,985 state and local law enforcement agencies that employed at least one full-time officer or the
equivalent in part-time officers.7
The FBI requires law enforcement agencies to use a two-step process for investigating hate
crimes before reporting them to the Hate Crime Statistics Program.8 In the first step, the law
enforcement officer that initial y responds to a potential hate crime incident is responsible for
determining whether there is any indication that the offense was motivated by bias against an
individual’s perceived membership in one of the groups specified in the HCSA. If there is an
4 T hese offenses include crimes against persons (homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated and simple assaults, intimidation,
human trafficking, and involuntary servitude), crimes against property (robbery, burglary, larceny -theft, motor vehicle
theft, arson, and destruct ion/damage/vandalism), and crimes against society (drugs or narcotics offenses, gambling
offenses, prostitution offenses, and weapons law violations).
5 U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics, 2019 (hereinafter, “Hate Crime
Statistics, 2019”).
6 Hate Crime Statistics, 2019.
7 T he number of state and local law enforcement agencies in 2008 is the most recent figure published by BJS. Another
census of state and local law enforcement agencies was conducted by BJS in 2 014, but figures from that census are not
yet available. Duren Banks, Joshua Hendrix, Matthew Hickman et al., National Sources of Law Enforcem ent Em ployee
Data, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau o f Justice Statistics, NCJ 249681, Washington,
DC, revised October 2016, p. 6.
8 U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crimes Data Collection Guidelines and Training
Manual, version 2.0, February 27, 2015, pp. 2-3.
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indication of a bias motivation, the incident is designated as a suspected bias-motivated crime and
forwarded to an investigator. In the second step, the investigator is responsible for reviewing the
facts of the incident and making the final determination as to whether the crime meets the HCSA
definition of a hate crime. According to the FBI, an agency should only report an incident as a
hate crime when a law enforcement investigation reveals sufficient evidence to lead a reasonable
and prudent person to conclude that the offender’s actions were motivated, in whole or in part, by
his or her bias.9
Law enforcement agencies can submit data on single and multiple bias incidents. Single bias
incidents are those in which one or more of the offenses committed during an incident are
motivated by the same bias. Multiple bias incidents are those in which one or more of the
offenses committed during an incident are motivated by two or more biases.
Annual hate crime data published by the FBI differs from traditional UCR crime data published
by the FBI in an important way. For most crimes, the FBI estimates full-year crime data for law
enforcement agencies that submit less than 12 months of data to the UCR. In contrast, hate crime
data published by the FBI only includes offenses reported by the police; no estimation for missing
data is done by the FBI for the Hate Crime Statistics Program.
National Crime Victimization Survey
BJS has collected data on hate crime victimizations through the NCVS since 2003.10 The NCVS
data is collected through annual interviews with residents of a national y representative sample of
households.11 Al people age 12 or older in the sampled households are interviewed. The NCVS
collects self-reported data on non-fatal personal crime victimizations (sexual assault, robbery,
aggravated and simple assaults, and personal larceny) and property crime victimizations
(burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other thefts) regardless of whether the crimes were reported to
the police.
The NCVS uses the same HCSA definition of a hate crime as the FBI. The NCVS collects data on
crimes that victims perceive to be motivated by an offender’s bias against them based on their
race, gender and gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Hate crime
victimizations are counts of “a single victim or household that experienced a criminal incident
believed by the victim to be motivated by hate.”12 In the NCVS data, hate crime victimizations
for personal crimes are counts of individual victims, while hate crime victimizations for property
crimes are counts of victimized households.
In order for a victimization to be classified as a hate crime in the NCVS, the victim has to report
one of three types of evidence of the offender’s bias: (1) the offender used hate language, (2) the
offender left hate signs or symbols at the scene, or (3) police investigators confirmed that a hate
crime occurred.13
Table 1 compares the methodologies of the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program and the NCVS.
9 Hate Crime Statistics, 2018, Methodology.
10 Madeline Masucci and Lynn Langton, Hate Crime Victimization, 2004–2015, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of
Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 250653, Washington, DC, June 2017, p. 1 (hereinafter “BJS, Hate
Crim e Victim izations”).
11 BJS, Hate Crime Victimizations, p. 9.
12 BJS, Hate Crime Victimizations, p. 2.
13 BJS, Hate Crime Victimizations, p. 10.
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Table 1. Comparison of the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program and the National
Crime Victimization Survey
UCR Hate Crime Statistics
National Crime Victimization
Program
Survey
Unit of analysis
Individuals, businesses, institutions, or
Individuals and households.
society as a whole.
Offenses
Crimes against persons: homicide,
Crimes against persons: sexual
rape, aggravated and simple
assault, robbery, aggravated and
assaults, intimidation, human
simple assaults, and personal
trafficking, and involuntary
larceny.
servitude.
Household property crimes:
Crimes against property: robbery,
burglary, motor vehicle theft, and
burglary, larceny-theft, motor
other thefts.
vehicle theft, arson,
destruction/damage/vandalism.
Crimes against society: drug or
narcotics offenses, gambling
offenses, prostitution offenses,
weapons law violations, and
animal cruelty offenses.a
Biases
Race, gender and gender identity,
Race, gender and gender identity,
religion, disability, sexual orientation,
religion, disability, sexual orientation,
or ethnicity.
or ethnicity
Methodology
Law enforcement agencies submit data
Interviews of persons 12 and older
on known hate crime offenses to the
living in a national y representative
FBI.
sample of households.
Participation
Voluntary. Law enforcement agencies
Voluntary. Participants in the NCVS
are asked but are not required to
can decline to answer questions about
submit hate crime data to the FBI.
hate crime victimizations or to
participate in the survey altogether.
Standard for a hate
When law enforcement finds sufficient
The victim perceives the offender’s bias
crime
evidence to lead a reasonable and
against him or her to be motivated by
prudent person to conclude that the
the victim belonging to or being
offender’s actions were motivated, in
associated with one of the groups
whole or in part, by his or her bias.
specified in the HCSA and (1) the
offender used hate language, (2) the
offender left hate signs or symbols at
the scene, or (3) police investigators
confirmed that a hate crime occurred.
National data
Yes.
Yes.
State data
Yes.
No.
Local data
Yes.
No.
Estimation
No. The FBI does not estimate hate
Yes. BJS uses responses from a national
crime data for non-participating law
sample of households to develop
enforcement agencies or for law
national estimates of hate crime
enforcement agencies that submit less
victimizations.
than a ful 12 months of data.
Frequency of collection
Annual y.
Annual y.
Source: CRS presentation of information published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of
Justice Statistics.
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a. Law enforcement agencies that participate in the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) col ect
and report data on 52 Part A offenses. Law enforcement agencies can report a bias motivation for each Part
A offense if one is present. Part A offenses include the offenses reported by the FBI through the Hate
Crime Statistics Program along with other offenses. Data for these other offenses are reported as other hate
crimes (in the case of crimes against persons or property) or as crimes against society in the FBI’s annual Hate
Crime Statistics publication. For more information on Part A offenses, see https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/
ucr/nibrs-quick-facts.pdf/view.
Differences in the Two National Measures of Hate
Crimes
A perennial issue that can cause confusion for those unfamiliar with the FBI’s and BJS’s data
collection goals and methodologies is the difference between the number of hate crime incidents
reported by the FBI and the number of hate crime victimizations reported by BJS. For example,
for 2019 (the most recent data available) the FBI reported that there were approximately 7,300
hate crime incidents that involved approximately 8,800 victims.14 In comparison, BJS reported
that there were an estimated 198,000 hate crime victimizations in 2017.15
What might explain the difference in the two national measures of hate crimes? The answer lies
partial y in the fact that the data reported by the FBI and BJS reflect different goals for collecting
data on hate crimes. The FBI data only reflect hate crime incidents that are reported to law
enforcement, and where law enforcement concludes that a hate crime has occurred and reports it
to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics Program. In contrast, the goal of the NCVS hate crime data
collection effort is to estimate the total number of hate crime victimizations that occur each year,
including victimizations that are not reported to law enforcement agencies (i.e., a portion of the
dark figure16 of crime). Because the NCVS collects data on reported and unreported hate crime
victimizations, its totals wil always be larger than the FBI’s hate crime data.
Another explanation for the difference between the two measures are the different standards
needed to be met to be counted as a hate crime in the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics Program and
the NCVS. For a hate crime to be counted by the FBI, law enforcement must have sufficient
evidence that would lead a reasonable and prudent person to conclude that the offender’s actions
were motivated, in whole or in part, by his or her bias. In contrast, under the NCVS, an incident is
counted as a hate crime if the victim believes that the offense was based on their race, ethnicity,
religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity, and the offender used hate
language, hate symbols, or a law enforcement investigation concluded that a hate crime had
occurred. An independent investigation of the perceived bias is not necessary in every case for the
NCVS interviewers to include the offense as a hate crime.
The goals and methodologies described above help explain why the NCVS estimates of hate
crime victimizations are higher than the number of hate crime incidents reported by the FBI. At
the same time, the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics Program collects data on a larger number of victim
types and crimes that may be motivated by the offender’s bias than the NCVS. For example, the
FBI collects data on bias motivated homicides and vandalisms, which are not be captured by the
NCVS. Law enforcement agencies can also report data on hate crimes against individuals,
businesses, religious institutions, other institutions, and society as a whole to the FBI, whereas the
14 Hate Crime Statistics, 2019, T able 1.
15 Barbara Oudekerk, “Hate Crime Statistics,” briefing prepared for the Virginia Advisory Committee, U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics,
March 29, 2019 (hereinafter, “Oudekerk, ‘Hate Crime Statistics’”).
16 T he dark figure of crime refers to crimes that are not reported to the police or are undetected.
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NCVS only collects data on hate crimes against individuals (i.e., personal crimes) and households
(i.e., property crimes).
Are Hate Crimes Underreported to the FBI by Law
Enforcement?
A common criticism of the FBI’s hate crime data is that a large proportion of participating law
enforcement agencies report zero hate crimes in a given year (zero-reporting agencies), leading
some advocacy groups to accuse the zero-reporting agencies of underreporting hate crimes.17 The
evidence presented to support these accusations are discrepancies between hate crime figures
reported by the FBI and the self-reported hate crime figures tabulated by community
organizations serving the communities that are often the targets of hate crime (e.g., organizations
serving the LGBTQ, Jewish, Muslim, or Arab communities).
Research suggests that some law enforcement agencies have underreported the number of hate
crime incidents to the FBI. In one study, researchers reviewed a sample of assault incident reports
from seven local law enforcement agencies across the country that were not classified as hate
crimes to see if there was any indication that the offenses had a bias motivation.18 Incidents where
there was a clear indication that bias was a predominant motivating factor in the assault were
coded as bias-motivated, and other incidents were coded as ambiguous if there was an indication
of bias but also evidence of some other identifiable triggering event or alternative motivation. The
study found that for some of the incidents, there was evidence that they were motivated by the
al eged perpetrator’s bias, but that these misclassification errors were relatively infrequent and
varied by law enforcement agency. The estimated proportion of misclassified cases for each
agency ranged from zero to 8% of al assault incidents when both bias-motivated and ambiguous
incidents were considered and from zero to 3% when only bias-motivated cases were considered.
While the proportion of misclassified assault cases for any individual agency is relatively low, if
the percentage of misclassified cases reported in this study was generalizable to the universe of
al assaults, it would account for thousands of hate crimes that were not reported to the Hate
Crime Statistics Program.
Another study of the accuracy of hate crime reporting utilized incident-based crime data (see
discussion of expanding the National Incident Based Reporting System, below) from four local
law enforcement agencies to evaluate whether hate crimes were being misclassified.19 This study
looked at al criminal incidents, not just assaults, reported to the four agencies in 2008 and
examined not only whether hate crimes were misclassified as non-bias-motivated offenses, but
17 See, for example, Muslim Advocates, “Muslim Advocates Responds to Rise in Annual Hate Crimes Data, Despite
Rampant Underreporting,” press release, November 14, 2018, https://muslimadvocates.org/2018/11/muslim-advocates-
responds-to-rise-in-annual-hate-crimes-data-despite-rampant-underreporting/; Human Right Campaign, “ New Statistics
Show Alarming Increase in Number of Reported Hate Crimes,” November 13, 2018, https://www.hrc.org/blog/new-
fbi-statistics-show-alarming-increase-in-number-of-reported-hate-crimes; and Arjun Singh Sethi, “ T he FBI Recorded a
Surge of Hate Crimes Last Year. But it Undercounted—By a Lot,” Washington Post, November 14, 2018.
18 Jack McDevitt, James Cronin, and Jennifer Balboni et al., Bridging the Information Disconnect in National
Reporting of Bias Crim e, Research in Brief, T he Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research, Northeastern University,
Boston, MA, p. 5.
19 James J. Nolan, Stephen M. Haas, and Erica T urley et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National
Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime Data,” Am erican Behavioral Scientist, vol. 59, no. 12 (2015), pp. 1562-
1587 (hereinafter, “Nolan et al., ‘Assessing the “Statistical Accuracy” of the National Incident -Based Reporting System
Hate Crime Data’”).
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also whether non-bias-motivated offenses were wrongly classified as hate crimes and how these
errors compared to misclassification errors for other non-hate crimes. This study found that
undercounting of hate crimes was the most common misclassification error in the records they
examined. The researchers noted that “extending error rates to the population suggest that the
estimated number of bias crimes that go unaccounted is noticeable.”20
Even though the research described above did not focus on local law enforcement agencies who
reported zero hate crimes, it is these agencies in particular that critics argue are likely to have
underreported hate crimes. As shown in Figure 1, the vast majority of agencies that participate in
the Hate Crime Statistics Program are zero-reporting agencies, leading critics to assume that hate
crimes are significantly underreported to the FBI.
In order for a law enforcement agency to be considered a “participant,” it has to submit data on
the number of hate crimes for at least part of the year or a letter signed by the police chief
certifying that no hate crimes occurred that year in its jurisdiction.21 The proportion of agencies
that reported zero hate crimes to the FBI was relatively consistent from 1996 to 2006, increased
from 2006 to 2014, and then decreased from 2014 to 2019. However, from 1996 to 2019, 80% or
more of participating law enforcement agencies reported zero hate crimes each year.
Figure 1. Number of Law Enforcement Agencies Participating in the FBI’s Hate
Crime Statistics Program, 1996-2019
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics for 1996-2019.
20 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” p. 1582.
21 Stephen M. Haas, James J. Jordan, and Erica T urley et al., Assessing the Validity of Hate Crime Reporting: An
Analysis of NIBRS Data, State of West Virginia, Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, Division of Justice
and Community Services, Office of Research and Strategic Planning, Charleston, WV, July 2011, p. 4.
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Aside from misclassification errors, there are several reasons that might explain why a law
enforcement agency does not report any hate crimes in a given year. The first, and most
straightforward, reason is because no hate crimes occurred. Given that law enforcement agency
jurisdictions include communities with as little as a few hundred residents, it is not implausible
that some residents, especial y those that live in very smal and homogeneous communities, did
not experience any hate crimes. Second, in order for a law enforcement agency to report a hate
crime to the FBI, it must be reported to the police. Data from the NCVS indicates that on average,
half of hate crime victimizations were not reported to the police from 2013 to 2017.22 Hate crime
victims might choose not to report the incident to the police for a variety of reasons, including
fear of retaliation,
embarrassment that they were victimized,
a belief that the crime was not motivated by the perpetrator’s bias,
lack of familiarity with a state’s hate crime laws,
distrust of law enforcement,
a belief that law enforcement wil not investigate the case,
fear of being exposed as a member of the LGBTQ community, or
fear of being re-traumatized by the criminal justice system.23
Even when a hate crime is reported to state and local law enforcement, an investigation must be
conducted into the perceived bias to determine if the offense was bias-motivated before reporting
it to the FBI as a hate crime. This step can be chal enging for law enforcement agencies,
especial y smal agencies with relatively few resources. When there is evidence that a hate crime
might have occurred, law enforcement agencies have to complete additional investigative steps to
determine whether an offense meets the statutory definition of a hate crime, and in some cases
law enforcement officers might not be trained sufficiently on recognizing biases in crimes to
conduct such investigations.24 Few states provide mandatory training for law enforcement officers
on investigating, identifying, and reporting hate crimes, and in the states that do, there is little
oversight to confirm that law enforcement officers are receiving the training and applying it
correctly.25
Ambiguity in the circumstances surrounding hate crimes can also lead to an undercounting.
Under the Hate Crime Statistics Program, law enforcement agencies report the number of hate
crimes that were “motivated in whole or in part by bias.” Law enforcement officers might have
difficulty applying this standard in cases where a bias motivation might not be obvious, especial y
when considering hate crimes that were motivated “in part” by an offender’s bias.26 While a cross
burning on the front yard of a black family’s home is an unambiguous hate crime, in other cases
22 Oudekerk, “Hate Crime Statistics.”
23 Harbani Ahuja, “T he Vicious Cycle of Hate: Systemic Flaws in Hate Crime Documentation in the United States and
the Impact on Minority Communities,” Cardozo Law Review, vol. 37, no. 5 (June 2016), pp. 1882 -1883 (hereinafter,
“Ahuja, ‘T he Vicious Cycle of Hate’”).
24 William B. Rubenstein, “T he Real Story of U.S. Hate Crime Statistics: An Empirical Analysis,” Tulane Law Review,
vol. 78, no. 4 (March 2004), p. 1220 (hereinafter, “ Rubenstein, ‘The Real Story of U.S. Hate Crime Statistics’”).
25 Ahuja, “T he Vicious Cycle of Hate,” p. 1892.
26 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” p. 1564.
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the motivation of the al eged perpetrators might not be so clear. These ambiguous hate crimes can
be classified into two categories: response/retaliation events and target-selection events.27
Response/retaliation events are those where the offense was first triggered by
something other than bias, but at some point bias exacerbates the incident into a
hate crime.28 For example, a white motorist and a black motorist get into a
dispute because their cars were involved in an accident. However, after a few
minutes, the white motorist assaults the black motorist while yel ing racial slurs.
In this case, the incident was not initiated because of the white motorist’s bias
against the black motorist, but the white motorist’s bias eventual y resulted in
him assaulting the black motorist.
Target-selection events are those where a target of a crime is selected because of
the offender’s bias against members of the group, but the offender’s bias in not
obvious.29 For example, someone might rob men leaving bars that are known to
be frequented by same sex couples because the offender believes they wil be less
likely to report the offense because they might not want to be identified as being
a member of the LGBTQ community.
In addition to issues related to law enforcement officer training on identifying hate crimes for
submission to the FBI, differences in how a hate crime is defined under state law and under the
HCSA can create its own ambiguities. For example, gender identity is a protected class under the
HCSA, but it might not be a recognized bias motivation under a state’s laws. As such, if a law
enforcement officer is more familiar with the state’s hate crime definition, he or she might not
identify an offense based on gender-bias as a potential hate crime. As one group of researchers
noted:
Even when potential bias crimes are reported to a participating agency, the agency must
then recognize any indications of bias, determine whether the incident is bias motivated,
document the motivation, and submit the incident to UCR. Empirical evidence suggests
that the processing of bias -crime reporting across participating law enforcement agencies
is variable and subject to much error and interpretation by local departments.30
Improving Hate Crime Data: Considerations for
Policymakers
Congress passed the HCSA with the intent of collecting national data on bias-motivated offenses
that could be used to inform federal hate crime policy. While DOJ has taken steps to collect these
data, the hate crime data reported by the FBI is incomplete and the NCVS self-reported hate
crime victimization data likely includes incidents that would not meet the legal standard needed
to be charged as hate crime. Hate crime data “missing” from the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics
27 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” p. 1564.
28 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” pp. 1564-1565.
29 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” p. 1565.
30 Shea W. Cronin, Jack McDevitt, and Amy Farrell et al., “Bias-Crime Reporting: Organizational Responses to
Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Infrequency in Eight Police Departments,” American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 51, no. 2
(October 2007), p. 216.
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program results from a series of complications associated with collecting these data (e.g., victims
might not report the offense to the police, law enforcement agencies might fail to correctly
identify potential hate crimes, or law enforcement agencies might not routinely and
systematical y report hate crime data to the FBI). Policymakers may have an interest in what steps
Congress could take to help improve the quality of the FBI’s hate crime data. One option on the
horizon might be the wide-scale adoption of the National Incident Based Reporting System
(NIBRS).
The FBI phased out the UCR summary reporting system starting January 1, 2021. Going forward,
the FBI is to accept only NIBRS-compliant data from law enforcement agencies.31 To support
state and local law enforcement agencies’ transitions to NIBRS, state and local governments that
are not certified as NIBRS compliant have been required since FY2018 to use 3% of their award
under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program to achieve
compliance.32
Compared to the UCR summary reporting system, NIBRS collects more data on a wider variety
of offenses.33 NIBRS asks participating law enforcement agencies to collect and report incident-
level data on offenders, victims, the relationship between victims and offenders, and the
circumstances surrounding the incident for 52 different offenses. In comparison, the current
summary reporting system is largely a tabulation of the number of eight Part I offenses reported
to the police.34
As a part of NIBRS, reporting agencies can identify whether an offense was motivated by an
offender’s bias against the victim for each reported offense. Under the Hate Crime Statistics
Program, law enforcement agencies that are not currently submitting NIBRS-compliant data
submit a supplemental summary report to the FBI when there is evidence that one or more crimes
in their jurisdiction involved a bias motivation. It has been argued that hate crime reporting wil
increase as more agencies adopt NIBRS because reporting the presence or absence of bias
motivations is built into NIBRS.35 In addition to making it easier for law enforcement agencies to
report hate crimes to the FBI, NIBRS provides data on a wider variety of offenses, including
those that were motivated by offenders’ bias against their victims, and data on the context of hate
crimes (e.g., locations where hate crimes occur, the relationship between al eged perpetrators and
victims of hate crimes, whether al eged offenders are residents of the community where they
committed their offenses, the weapons used in the offenses (if any), and the types and seriousness
of injuries sustained by hate crime victims).36
While the FBI has stopped accepting crime data from non-NIBRS compliant law enforcement
agencies, participation in the program is stil voluntary. If a law enforcement agency does not
31 For more information on the FBI’s transition to NIBRS, see CRS Report R46668, The National Incident-Based
Reporting System (NIBRS): Benefits and Issues.
32 U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Edward Byrne Memorial
Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), updated February 2021, p. 4
(hereinafter, “JAG FAQs”).
33 For more information, see U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, SRS to NIBRS: The Path to
Better UCR Data, March 28, 2017, https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/cjis-link/srs-to-nibrs-the-path-to-better-ucr-data.
34 T he eight Part I offenses are homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny -theft, motor vehicle theft,
and arson.
35 James J. Nolan III, Yoshio Akiyama, and Samuel Berhanu, “T he Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990: Developing a
Method for Measuring the Occurrence of Hate Violence,” American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 46, no. 1 (September
2002), p. 146 (hereinafter, “ Nolan et al., ‘T he Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990’) .
36 Nolan et al., “T he Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990,” p. 147.
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believe it is worth the time and effort to adopt NIBRS and the state does not mandate that it
participates in the program, there is no federal mandate or incentive for the agency to participate.
Therefore, policymakers might have an interest in what steps Congress could take to promote
wide-scale adoption of the program. Congress could consider placing a condition on a program
such as JAG that would require law enforcement agencies to submit NIBRS data to the FBI or
face a penalty under the program. However, the JAG program already provides a financial
incentive to participate fully in the FBI’s crime reporting program. Half of a state’s al ocation is
based on its proportion of the average number of violent crimes reported in the United States over
the past three years, and al ocations for local governments are based on their proportion of the
average number of violent crimes reported in the state over the past three years.37 The Bureau of
Justice Assistance reports that NIBRS data wil be used to calculate JAG awards once NIBRS
replaces the summary reporting system.38 In addition, in order for local governments to be
eligible for a direct award under the program, they have to have submitted violent crime data for
3 of the past 10 years.39 Yet, even with these incentives some law enforcement agencies in the
United States do not participate in the UCR because compiling the data can be difficult and time
consuming, and many smal agencies might not have the resources needed to fully comply with
the FBI’s data collection and submission requirements. Thus, Congress could also consider
authorizing a new grant program that would provide funding to state and local governments to
cover expenses related to transitioning to NIBRS, such as purchasing new software and
computers, or training officers on how to use NIBRS.
While NIBRS might provide some administrative efficiency with regard to reporting hate crimes,
it does not address some of the other issues law enforcement agencies currently have with
reporting hate crimes through the UCR program. Implementing NIBRS does not address hate
crime victims being reluctant to report an offense to the police, the need for training for law
enforcement officers on how to identify potential hate crimes, or the need to improve law
enforcement agencies processes for investigating potential hate crimes, nor wil it resolve
differences between the HCSA and state hate crime definitions.
Author Information
Nathan James
Emily J. Hanson
Analyst in Crime Policy
Analyst in Social Policy
37 For more information on how allocations are calculated under the JAG program see CRS In Focus IF10691, The
Edward Byrne Mem orial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program .
38 JAG FAQs, p. 4.
39 34 U.S.C. §10156(e)(3).
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Disclaimer
This document was prepared by the Congressional Research Service (CRS). CRS serves as nonpartisan
shared staff to congressional committees and Members of Congress. It operates solely at the behest of and
under the direction of Congress. Information in a CRS Report should n ot be relied upon for purposes other
than public understanding of information that has been provided by CRS to Members of Congress in
connection with CRS’s institutional role. CRS Reports, as a work of the United States Government, are not
subject to copyright protection in the United States. Any CRS Report may be reproduced and distributed in
its entirety without permission from CRS. However, as a CRS Report may include copyrighted images or
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copy or otherwise use copyrighted material.
Congressional Research Service
R46318 · VERSION 12 · UPDATED
12
March 22, 2021
States
Nathan James
A number of recent and high-profile crimes where the offenders’ actions appeared to be
Analyst in Crime Policy
motivated by their bias or animosity towards a particular race, ethnicity, religion, sex,
sexual orientation, or gender identity has contributed to a perception that hate crimes are
Emily J. Hanson
on the rise in the United States. These incidents might also generate interest among
Analyst in Social Policy
policymakers about how the federal government collects data on hate crimes committed
in the United States.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) started its Hate Crime Statistics program
pursuant to the requirement in the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HSCA, P.L. 101-275) that the Department of Justice
(DOJ) collect and report data on crimes that “manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender and gender
identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including where appropriate the crimes of murder,
non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape; aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation; arson; and
destruction, damage or vandalism of property.” In addition to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics program, DOJ also
collects data on hate crime victimizations through the Bureau of Justice Statistics’ (BJS’) National Crime
Victimization Survey (NCVS). The NCVS measures self-reported criminal victimizations including those
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 the characteristics outlined in the HSCA.
Scholars, advocates, and members of the media have pointed out that there is a significant disparity between the
number of hate crimes reported by the FBI each year and the number of hate crime victimizations reported by
BJS. This has led some to criticize the hate crime data published by the FBI as an undercount of the number of
hate crimes committed in the United States each year. However, this statistics gap can be partial y explained by
the different measures and methodologies utilized by the FBI and BJS to collect these data. For example, the FBI
only reports on crimes that have been reported to the police, while BJS collects reports of criminal victimizations
that may or may not meet the statutory definition of a hate crime and may or may not have been reported to the
police. There are a number of reasons why some victims do not report their victimization to the police, including
fear of reprisal, not wanting the offender to get in trouble, believing that police would not or could not do
anything to help, and believing the crime to be a personal issue or too trivial to report.
There are also several reasons why a hate crime that was reported to the police might not be subsequently reported
to the FBI for their Hate Crime Statistics program. Deciding whether a crime meets the statutory definition of a
hate crime requires law enforcement agencies to investigate al egations of hate crime motivations before making a
final determination. Reporting by law enforcement agencies to the FBI might be hampered by the fact that some
law enforcement agencies do not have the training necessary to investigate potential bias-motivated offenses
effectively. In addition, differing definitions between the FBI and state statutes as to what constitutes a hate crime
generate confusion as to which standard should be used to determine whether a hate crime occurred and should be
reported.
The FBI transitioned to the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) as of January 1, 2021, and no
longer accepts non-NIBRS compliant data from law enforcement agencies. Policymakers might have an interest
in how NIBRS differs from the FBI’s current hate crime reporting program and whether full participation in
NIBRS might improve the quality and completeness of federal hate crime data. However, like the FBI’s current
crime reporting program, participation in the NIBRS program is voluntary, and policymakers might consider steps
Congress could take to promote wide-scale adoption of NIBRS.
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Contents
The Hate Crime Statistics Act ........................................................................................... 1
Federal Hate Crime Data .................................................................................................. 2
Hate Crime Statistics Program ..................................................................................... 2
National Crime Victimization Survey ........................................................................... 3
Differences in the Two National Measures of Hate Crimes .................................................... 5
Are Hate Crimes Underreported to the FBI by Law Enforcement? .......................................... 6
Improving Hate Crime Data: Considerations for Policymakers ............................................... 9
Figures
Figure 1. Number of Law Enforcement Agencies Participating in the FBI’s Hate Crime
Statistics Program, 1996-2019 ........................................................................................ 7
Tables
Table 1. Comparison of the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program and the National Crime
Victimization Survey .................................................................................................... 4
Contacts
Author Information ....................................................................................................... 11
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he United States has recently experienced a series of high-profile violent crimes where the
offenders’ actions appeared to be motivated by their bias or animosity towards a particular
T race, ethnicity, religion, sex, sexual orientation, or gender identity. For example, shootings
at synagogues in Pittsburgh, PA, and Poway, CA; a driver speeding his car into protestors at a
“Unite the Right” ral y in Charlottesvil e, VA; a shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, TX, where the
shooter al egedly said he was targeting “Mexicans” and espoused concerns about the “invasion”
of the United States by immigrants; and reports of hate crimes against Asian Americans during
the Coronavirus pandemic contribute to a perception that hate crimes are on the rise in the United
States. The salience of these events and how they are covered in the media might also contribute
to the perception that there is a growing number of hate crimes (also known as bias crimes or
bias-motivated offenses) being perpetrated in communities across the country.1 Policymakers
might turn to hate crime data collected by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to understand if there
has actual y been an increase in hate crimes in the United States and, if so, the nature of the
increase. Policymakers might also utilize these same data to craft a policy response to hate crimes
that is grounded in the data and conduct oversight of the federal government’s efforts to combat
these crimes.
This report begins with an overview of federal sources of data on hate crimes. This includes a
brief overview of the Hate Crime Statistics Act (HCSA, P.L. 101-275), which requires DOJ to
collect and report data on hate crimes, and the two systems DOJ employs to col ect these data: the
Federal Bureau of Investigation’s (FBI’s) Hate Crime Statistics Program and the Bureau of
Justice Statistics’ (BJS’) National Crime Victimization Survey (NCVS). The report then discusses
two salient issues regarding hate crime statistics: the large difference between the number of hate
crimes reported by the FBI and the number of hate crime victimizations reported by BJS, and
concerns about law enforcement agencies underreporting hate crimes to the FBI. The report
concludes with a discussion of whether the wide-scale adoption of the FBI’s National Incident
Based Reporting System (NIBRS) might serve as a means of improving federal hate crime data.
The Hate Crime Statistics Act
The HCSA requires DOJ to collect and report data on crimes that “manifest evidence of prejudice
based on race, gender and gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity,
including where appropriate the crimes of murder, non-negligent manslaughter; forcible rape;
aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation; arson; and destruction, damage or vandalism of
property.” Congress required DOJ to collect these data because, at the time, few states collected
data on hate crimes and there were no national data.2 Policymakers believed that national data
would reveal the scope of the problem and provide a basis for more effective law enforcement
efforts to address hate crimes.3
Over the years since the HCSA was enacted, Congress has expanded the definition of what
constitutes a hate crime for data collection purposes. The act initial y required DOJ to collect data
1 For example, research suggests that increased media coverage of school shootings after a high -profile incident can
lead people to believe that school shootings occur with more frequency than they actually do. See Glenn W. Muschert,
“Research in School Shootings,” Sociology Compass, vol. 1, no. 1 (2007), pp. 60-80; and H. Jaymi Elsass, Jaclyn
Schidkraut, and Mark C. Stafford, “Studying School Shootings: Challenges and Considerations for Research,”
Am erican Journal of Crim inal Justice, vol. 14 (2016), pp. 444-464.
2 U.S. Congress, House Committee on the Judiciary, Hate Crime Statistics Act, report to accompany H.R. 1048, 101st
Cong., 1st sess., June 23, 1989, H.Rept. 101-109, p. 2; U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on the Judiciary, Hate Crim e
Statistics Act, report to accompany S. 419, 101st Cong., 1st sess., May 1, 1989, S.Rept. 101-21, p. 3 (hereinafter, “ House
Judiciary Committee report on the Hate Crime Statistics Act”).
3 House Judiciary Committee report on the Hate Crime Statistics Act, p. 3 .
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on hate crimes based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. In 2009, Congress
amended the act to require DOJ to collect data on hate crimes based on the victims’ gender or
gender identity (P.L. 111-84) or disability (P.L. 103-322). P.L. 111-84 also required DOJ to collect
and report data on hate crimes committed by and against juveniles.
The HCSA initial y included a sunset provision that would have ended the requirement for DOJ
to collect hate crime data after 1994. However, the Church Arson Prevention Act (P.L. 104-155)
removed that provision.
Federal Hate Crime Data
To meet the requirements of the HCSA and subsequent amendments, DOJ collects and reports
data on hate crimes that occur in the United States through two sources: the Hate Crime Statistics
program and the NCVS.
Hate Crime Statistics Program
DOJ fulfil s the HCSA’s requirement by collecting supplemental data on hate crimes through the
FBI’s Uniform Crime Reporting (UCR) program. The Hate Crime Statistics Program collects
data about hate crime offenders’ bias motivations for the set of offenses already reported to the
UCR program.4 Under the Hate Crime Statistics Program, the victim of a hate crime can be an
individual, a business, an institution, or society as a whole.
Hate Crime Statistics Program data is collected and reported to the FBI by law enforcement
agencies across the country. Agency participation in the Hate Crime Statistics Program, like the
UCR program, is voluntary but most agencies participate. In 2019, approximately 15,600 law
enforcement agencies in al 50 states and the District of Columbia participated in the Hate Crime
Statistics Program.5 The agencies that participated represented jurisdictions that include
approximately 305 mil ion people.6 For a point of comparison, in 2008 there were a reported
17,985 state and local law enforcement agencies that employed at least one full-time officer or the
equivalent in part-time officers.7
The FBI requires law enforcement agencies to use a two-step process for investigating hate
crimes before reporting them to the Hate Crime Statistics Program.8 In the first step, the law
enforcement officer that initial y responds to a potential hate crime incident is responsible for
determining whether there is any indication that the offense was motivated by bias against an
individual’s perceived membership in one of the groups specified in the HCSA. If there is an
4 T hese offenses include crimes against persons (homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated and simple assaults, intimidation,
human trafficking, and involuntary servitude), crimes against property (robbery, burglary, larceny -theft, motor vehicle
theft, arson, and destruct ion/damage/vandalism), and crimes against society (drugs or narcotics offenses, gambling
offenses, prostitution offenses, and weapons law violations).
5 U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics, 2019 (hereinafter, “Hate Crime
Statistics, 2019”).
6 Hate Crime Statistics, 2019.
7 T he number of state and local law enforcement agencies in 2008 is the most recent figure published by BJS. Another
census of state and local law enforcement agencies was conducted by BJS in 2 014, but figures from that census are not
yet available. Duren Banks, Joshua Hendrix, Matthew Hickman et al., National Sources of Law Enforcem ent Em ployee
Data, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau o f Justice Statistics, NCJ 249681, Washington,
DC, revised October 2016, p. 6.
8 U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crimes Data Collection Guidelines and Training
Manual, version 2.0, February 27, 2015, pp. 2-3.
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indication of a bias motivation, the incident is designated as a suspected bias-motivated crime and
forwarded to an investigator. In the second step, the investigator is responsible for reviewing the
facts of the incident and making the final determination as to whether the crime meets the HCSA
definition of a hate crime. According to the FBI, an agency should only report an incident as a
hate crime when a law enforcement investigation reveals sufficient evidence to lead a reasonable
and prudent person to conclude that the offender’s actions were motivated, in whole or in part, by
his or her bias.9
Law enforcement agencies can submit data on single and multiple bias incidents. Single bias
incidents are those in which one or more of the offenses committed during an incident are
motivated by the same bias. Multiple bias incidents are those in which one or more of the
offenses committed during an incident are motivated by two or more biases.
Annual hate crime data published by the FBI differs from traditional UCR crime data published
by the FBI in an important way. For most crimes, the FBI estimates full-year crime data for law
enforcement agencies that submit less than 12 months of data to the UCR. In contrast, hate crime
data published by the FBI only includes offenses reported by the police; no estimation for missing
data is done by the FBI for the Hate Crime Statistics Program.
National Crime Victimization Survey
BJS has collected data on hate crime victimizations through the NCVS since 2003.10 The NCVS
data is collected through annual interviews with residents of a national y representative sample of
households.11 Al people age 12 or older in the sampled households are interviewed. The NCVS
collects self-reported data on non-fatal personal crime victimizations (sexual assault, robbery,
aggravated and simple assaults, and personal larceny) and property crime victimizations
(burglary, motor vehicle theft, and other thefts) regardless of whether the crimes were reported to
the police.
The NCVS uses the same HCSA definition of a hate crime as the FBI. The NCVS collects data on
crimes that victims perceive to be motivated by an offender’s bias against them based on their
race, gender and gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity. Hate crime
victimizations are counts of “a single victim or household that experienced a criminal incident
believed by the victim to be motivated by hate.”12 In the NCVS data, hate crime victimizations
for personal crimes are counts of individual victims, while hate crime victimizations for property
crimes are counts of victimized households.
In order for a victimization to be classified as a hate crime in the NCVS, the victim has to report
one of three types of evidence of the offender’s bias: (1) the offender used hate language, (2) the
offender left hate signs or symbols at the scene, or (3) police investigators confirmed that a hate
crime occurred.13
Table 1 compares the methodologies of the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program and the NCVS.
9 Hate Crime Statistics, 2018, Methodology.
10 Madeline Masucci and Lynn Langton, Hate Crime Victimization, 2004–2015, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of
Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics, NCJ 250653, Washington, DC, June 2017, p. 1 (hereinafter “BJS, Hate
Crim e Victim izations”).
11 BJS, Hate Crime Victimizations, p. 9.
12 BJS, Hate Crime Victimizations, p. 2.
13 BJS, Hate Crime Victimizations, p. 10.
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Table 1. Comparison of the UCR Hate Crime Statistics Program and the National
Crime Victimization Survey
UCR Hate Crime Statistics
National Crime Victimization
Program
Survey
Unit of analysis
Individuals, businesses, institutions, or
Individuals and households.
society as a whole.
Offenses
Crimes against persons: homicide,
Crimes against persons: sexual
rape, aggravated and simple
assault, robbery, aggravated and
assaults, intimidation, human
simple assaults, and personal
trafficking, and involuntary
larceny.
servitude.
Household property crimes:
Crimes against property: robbery,
burglary, motor vehicle theft, and
burglary, larceny-theft, motor
other thefts.
vehicle theft, arson,
destruction/damage/vandalism.
Crimes against society: drug or
narcotics offenses, gambling
offenses, prostitution offenses,
weapons law violations, and
animal cruelty offenses.a
Biases
Race, gender and gender identity,
Race, gender and gender identity,
religion, disability, sexual orientation,
religion, disability, sexual orientation,
or ethnicity.
or ethnicity
Methodology
Law enforcement agencies submit data
Interviews of persons 12 and older
on known hate crime offenses to the
living in a national y representative
FBI.
sample of households.
Participation
Voluntary. Law enforcement agencies
Voluntary. Participants in the NCVS
are asked but are not required to
can decline to answer questions about
submit hate crime data to the FBI.
hate crime victimizations or to
participate in the survey altogether.
Standard for a hate
When law enforcement finds sufficient
The victim perceives the offender’s bias
crime
evidence to lead a reasonable and
against him or her to be motivated by
prudent person to conclude that the
the victim belonging to or being
offender’s actions were motivated, in
associated with one of the groups
whole or in part, by his or her bias.
specified in the HCSA and (1) the
offender used hate language, (2) the
offender left hate signs or symbols at
the scene, or (3) police investigators
confirmed that a hate crime occurred.
National data
Yes.
Yes.
State data
Yes.
No.
Local data
Yes.
No.
Estimation
No. The FBI does not estimate hate
Yes. BJS uses responses from a national
crime data for non-participating law
sample of households to develop
enforcement agencies or for law
national estimates of hate crime
enforcement agencies that submit less
victimizations.
than a ful 12 months of data.
Frequency of collection
Annual y.
Annual y.
Source: CRS presentation of information published by the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Bureau of
Justice Statistics.
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a. Law enforcement agencies that participate in the National Incident Based Reporting System (NIBRS) col ect
and report data on 52 Part A offenses. Law enforcement agencies can report a bias motivation for each Part
A offense if one is present. Part A offenses include the offenses reported by the FBI through the Hate
Crime Statistics Program along with other offenses. Data for these other offenses are reported as other hate
crimes (in the case of crimes against persons or property) or as crimes against society in the FBI’s annual Hate
Crime Statistics publication. For more information on Part A offenses, see https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/
ucr/nibrs-quick-facts.pdf/view.
Differences in the Two National Measures of Hate
Crimes
A perennial issue that can cause confusion for those unfamiliar with the FBI’s and BJS’s data
collection goals and methodologies is the difference between the number of hate crime incidents
reported by the FBI and the number of hate crime victimizations reported by BJS. For example,
for 2019 (the most recent data available) the FBI reported that there were approximately 7,300
hate crime incidents that involved approximately 8,800 victims.14 In comparison, BJS reported
that there were an estimated 198,000 hate crime victimizations in 2017.15
What might explain the difference in the two national measures of hate crimes? The answer lies
partial y in the fact that the data reported by the FBI and BJS reflect different goals for collecting
data on hate crimes. The FBI data only reflect hate crime incidents that are reported to law
enforcement, and where law enforcement concludes that a hate crime has occurred and reports it
to the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics Program. In contrast, the goal of the NCVS hate crime data
collection effort is to estimate the total number of hate crime victimizations that occur each year,
including victimizations that are not reported to law enforcement agencies (i.e., a portion of the
dark figure16 of crime). Because the NCVS collects data on reported and unreported hate crime
victimizations, its totals wil always be larger than the FBI’s hate crime data.
Another explanation for the difference between the two measures are the different standards
needed to be met to be counted as a hate crime in the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics Program and
the NCVS. For a hate crime to be counted by the FBI, law enforcement must have sufficient
evidence that would lead a reasonable and prudent person to conclude that the offender’s actions
were motivated, in whole or in part, by his or her bias. In contrast, under the NCVS, an incident is
counted as a hate crime if the victim believes that the offense was based on their race, ethnicity,
religion, disability, sexual orientation, gender, or gender identity, and the offender used hate
language, hate symbols, or a law enforcement investigation concluded that a hate crime had
occurred. An independent investigation of the perceived bias is not necessary in every case for the
NCVS interviewers to include the offense as a hate crime.
The goals and methodologies described above help explain why the NCVS estimates of hate
crime victimizations are higher than the number of hate crime incidents reported by the FBI. At
the same time, the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics Program collects data on a larger number of victim
types and crimes that may be motivated by the offender’s bias than the NCVS. For example, the
FBI collects data on bias motivated homicides and vandalisms, which are not be captured by the
NCVS. Law enforcement agencies can also report data on hate crimes against individuals,
businesses, religious institutions, other institutions, and society as a whole to the FBI, whereas the
14 Hate Crime Statistics, 2019, T able 1.
15 Barbara Oudekerk, “Hate Crime Statistics,” briefing prepared for the Virginia Advisory Committee, U.S.
Commission on Civil Rights, U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics,
March 29, 2019 (hereinafter, “Oudekerk, ‘Hate Crime Statistics’”).
16 T he dark figure of crime refers to crimes that are not reported to the police or are undetected.
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NCVS only collects data on hate crimes against individuals (i.e., personal crimes) and households
(i.e., property crimes).
Are Hate Crimes Underreported to the FBI by Law
Enforcement?
A common criticism of the FBI’s hate crime data is that a large proportion of participating law
enforcement agencies report zero hate crimes in a given year (zero-reporting agencies), leading
some advocacy groups to accuse the zero-reporting agencies of underreporting hate crimes.17 The
evidence presented to support these accusations are discrepancies between hate crime figures
reported by the FBI and the self-reported hate crime figures tabulated by community
organizations serving the communities that are often the targets of hate crime (e.g., organizations
serving the LGBTQ, Jewish, Muslim, or Arab communities).
Research suggests that some law enforcement agencies have underreported the number of hate
crime incidents to the FBI. In one study, researchers reviewed a sample of assault incident reports
from seven local law enforcement agencies across the country that were not classified as hate
crimes to see if there was any indication that the offenses had a bias motivation.18 Incidents where
there was a clear indication that bias was a predominant motivating factor in the assault were
coded as bias-motivated, and other incidents were coded as ambiguous if there was an indication
of bias but also evidence of some other identifiable triggering event or alternative motivation. The
study found that for some of the incidents, there was evidence that they were motivated by the
al eged perpetrator’s bias, but that these misclassification errors were relatively infrequent and
varied by law enforcement agency. The estimated proportion of misclassified cases for each
agency ranged from zero to 8% of al assault incidents when both bias-motivated and ambiguous
incidents were considered and from zero to 3% when only bias-motivated cases were considered.
While the proportion of misclassified assault cases for any individual agency is relatively low, if
the percentage of misclassified cases reported in this study was generalizable to the universe of
al assaults, it would account for thousands of hate crimes that were not reported to the Hate
Crime Statistics Program.
Another study of the accuracy of hate crime reporting utilized incident-based crime data (see
discussion of expanding the National Incident Based Reporting System, below) from four local
law enforcement agencies to evaluate whether hate crimes were being misclassified.19 This study
looked at al criminal incidents, not just assaults, reported to the four agencies in 2008 and
examined not only whether hate crimes were misclassified as non-bias-motivated offenses, but
17 See, for example, Muslim Advocates, “Muslim Advocates Responds to Rise in Annual Hate Crimes Data, Despite
Rampant Underreporting,” press release, November 14, 2018, https://muslimadvocates.org/2018/11/muslim-advocates-
responds-to-rise-in-annual-hate-crimes-data-despite-rampant-underreporting/; Human Right Campaign, “ New Statistics
Show Alarming Increase in Number of Reported Hate Crimes,” November 13, 2018, https://www.hrc.org/blog/new-
fbi-statistics-show-alarming-increase-in-number-of-reported-hate-crimes; and Arjun Singh Sethi, “ T he FBI Recorded a
Surge of Hate Crimes Last Year. But it Undercounted—By a Lot,” Washington Post, November 14, 2018.
18 Jack McDevitt, James Cronin, and Jennifer Balboni et al., Bridging the Information Disconnect in National
Reporting of Bias Crim e, Research in Brief, T he Center for Criminal Justice Policy Research, Northeastern University,
Boston, MA, p. 5.
19 James J. Nolan, Stephen M. Haas, and Erica T urley et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National
Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime Data,” Am erican Behavioral Scientist, vol. 59, no. 12 (2015), pp. 1562-
1587 (hereinafter, “Nolan et al., ‘Assessing the “Statistical Accuracy” of the National Incident -Based Reporting System
Hate Crime Data’”).
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also whether non-bias-motivated offenses were wrongly classified as hate crimes and how these
errors compared to misclassification errors for other non-hate crimes. This study found that
undercounting of hate crimes was the most common misclassification error in the records they
examined. The researchers noted that “extending error rates to the population suggest that the
estimated number of bias crimes that go unaccounted is noticeable.”20
Even though the research described above did not focus on local law enforcement agencies who
reported zero hate crimes, it is these agencies in particular that critics argue are likely to have
underreported hate crimes. As shown in Figure 1, the vast majority of agencies that participate in
the Hate Crime Statistics Program are zero-reporting agencies, leading critics to assume that hate
crimes are significantly underreported to the FBI.
In order for a law enforcement agency to be considered a “participant,” it has to submit data on
the number of hate crimes for at least part of the year or a letter signed by the police chief
certifying that no hate crimes occurred that year in its jurisdiction.21 The proportion of agencies
that reported zero hate crimes to the FBI was relatively consistent from 1996 to 2006, increased
from 2006 to 2014, and then decreased from 2014 to 2019. However, from 1996 to 2019, 80% or
more of participating law enforcement agencies reported zero hate crimes each year.
Figure 1. Number of Law Enforcement Agencies Participating in the FBI’s Hate
Crime Statistics Program, 1996-2019
Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, Hate Crime Statistics for 1996-2019.
20 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” p. 1582.
21 Stephen M. Haas, James J. Jordan, and Erica T urley et al., Assessing the Validity of Hate Crime Reporting: An
Analysis of NIBRS Data, State of West Virginia, Department of Military Affairs and Public Safety, Division of Justice
and Community Services, Office of Research and Strategic Planning, Charleston, WV, July 2011, p. 4.
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Aside from misclassification errors, there are several reasons that might explain why a law
enforcement agency does not report any hate crimes in a given year. The first, and most
straightforward, reason is because no hate crimes occurred. Given that law enforcement agency
jurisdictions include communities with as little as a few hundred residents, it is not implausible
that some residents, especial y those that live in very smal and homogeneous communities, did
not experience any hate crimes. Second, in order for a law enforcement agency to report a hate
crime to the FBI, it must be reported to the police. Data from the NCVS indicates that on average,
half of hate crime victimizations were not reported to the police from 2013 to 2017.22 Hate crime
victims might choose not to report the incident to the police for a variety of reasons, including
fear of retaliation,
embarrassment that they were victimized,
a belief that the crime was not motivated by the perpetrator’s bias,
lack of familiarity with a state’s hate crime laws,
distrust of law enforcement,
a belief that law enforcement wil not investigate the case,
fear of being exposed as a member of the LGBTQ community, or
fear of being re-traumatized by the criminal justice system.23
Even when a hate crime is reported to state and local law enforcement, an investigation must be
conducted into the perceived bias to determine if the offense was bias-motivated before reporting
it to the FBI as a hate crime. This step can be chal enging for law enforcement agencies,
especial y smal agencies with relatively few resources. When there is evidence that a hate crime
might have occurred, law enforcement agencies have to complete additional investigative steps to
determine whether an offense meets the statutory definition of a hate crime, and in some cases
law enforcement officers might not be trained sufficiently on recognizing biases in crimes to
conduct such investigations.24 Few states provide mandatory training for law enforcement officers
on investigating, identifying, and reporting hate crimes, and in the states that do, there is little
oversight to confirm that law enforcement officers are receiving the training and applying it
correctly.25
Ambiguity in the circumstances surrounding hate crimes can also lead to an undercounting.
Under the Hate Crime Statistics Program, law enforcement agencies report the number of hate
crimes that were “motivated in whole or in part by bias.” Law enforcement officers might have
difficulty applying this standard in cases where a bias motivation might not be obvious, especial y
when considering hate crimes that were motivated “in part” by an offender’s bias.26 While a cross
burning on the front yard of a black family’s home is an unambiguous hate crime, in other cases
22 Oudekerk, “Hate Crime Statistics.”
23 Harbani Ahuja, “T he Vicious Cycle of Hate: Systemic Flaws in Hate Crime Documentation in the United States and
the Impact on Minority Communities,” Cardozo Law Review, vol. 37, no. 5 (June 2016), pp. 1882 -1883 (hereinafter,
“Ahuja, ‘T he Vicious Cycle of Hate’”).
24 William B. Rubenstein, “T he Real Story of U.S. Hate Crime Statistics: An Empirical Analysis,” Tulane Law Review,
vol. 78, no. 4 (March 2004), p. 1220 (hereinafter, “ Rubenstein, ‘The Real Story of U.S. Hate Crime Statistics’”).
25 Ahuja, “T he Vicious Cycle of Hate,” p. 1892.
26 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” p. 1564.
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the motivation of the al eged perpetrators might not be so clear. These ambiguous hate crimes can
be classified into two categories: response/retaliation events and target-selection events.27
Response/retaliation events are those where the offense was first triggered by
something other than bias, but at some point bias exacerbates the incident into a
hate crime.28 For example, a white motorist and a black motorist get into a
dispute because their cars were involved in an accident. However, after a few
minutes, the white motorist assaults the black motorist while yel ing racial slurs.
In this case, the incident was not initiated because of the white motorist’s bias
against the black motorist, but the white motorist’s bias eventual y resulted in
him assaulting the black motorist.
Target-selection events are those where a target of a crime is selected because of
the offender’s bias against members of the group, but the offender’s bias in not
obvious.29 For example, someone might rob men leaving bars that are known to
be frequented by same sex couples because the offender believes they wil be less
likely to report the offense because they might not want to be identified as being
a member of the LGBTQ community.
In addition to issues related to law enforcement officer training on identifying hate crimes for
submission to the FBI, differences in how a hate crime is defined under state law and under the
HCSA can create its own ambiguities. For example, gender identity is a protected class under the
HCSA, but it might not be a recognized bias motivation under a state’s laws. As such, if a law
enforcement officer is more familiar with the state’s hate crime definition, he or she might not
identify an offense based on gender-bias as a potential hate crime. As one group of researchers
noted:
Even when potential bias crimes are reported to a participating agency, the agency must
then recognize any indications of bias, determine whether the incident is bias motivated,
document the motivation, and submit the incident to UCR. Empirical evidence suggests
that the processing of bias -crime reporting across participating law enforcement agencies
is variable and subject to much error and interpretation by local departments.30
Improving Hate Crime Data: Considerations for
Policymakers
Congress passed the HCSA with the intent of collecting national data on bias-motivated offenses
that could be used to inform federal hate crime policy. While DOJ has taken steps to collect these
data, the hate crime data reported by the FBI is incomplete and the NCVS self-reported hate
crime victimization data likely includes incidents that would not meet the legal standard needed
to be charged as hate crime. Hate crime data “missing” from the FBI’s Hate Crime Statistics
27 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” p. 1564.
28 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” pp. 1564-1565.
29 Nolan et al., “Assessing the ‘Statistical Accuracy’ of the National Incident -Based Reporting System Hate Crime
Data,” p. 1565.
30 Shea W. Cronin, Jack McDevitt, and Amy Farrell et al., “Bias-Crime Reporting: Organizational Responses to
Ambiguity, Uncertainty, and Infrequency in Eight Police Departments,” American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 51, no. 2
(October 2007), p. 216.
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program results from a series of complications associated with collecting these data (e.g., victims
might not report the offense to the police, law enforcement agencies might fail to correctly
identify potential hate crimes, or law enforcement agencies might not routinely and
systematical y report hate crime data to the FBI). Policymakers may have an interest in what steps
Congress could take to help improve the quality of the FBI’s hate crime data. One option on the
horizon might be the wide-scale adoption of the National Incident Based Reporting System
(NIBRS).
The FBI phased out the UCR summary reporting system starting January 1, 2021. Going forward,
the FBI is to accept only NIBRS-compliant data from law enforcement agencies.31 To support
state and local law enforcement agencies’ transitions to NIBRS, state and local governments that
are not certified as NIBRS compliant have been required since FY2018 to use 3% of their award
under the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program to achieve
compliance.32
Compared to the UCR summary reporting system, NIBRS collects more data on a wider variety
of offenses.33 NIBRS asks participating law enforcement agencies to collect and report incident-
level data on offenders, victims, the relationship between victims and offenders, and the
circumstances surrounding the incident for 52 different offenses. In comparison, the current
summary reporting system is largely a tabulation of the number of eight Part I offenses reported
to the police.34
As a part of NIBRS, reporting agencies can identify whether an offense was motivated by an
offender’s bias against the victim for each reported offense. Under the Hate Crime Statistics
Program, law enforcement agencies that are not currently submitting NIBRS-compliant data
submit a supplemental summary report to the FBI when there is evidence that one or more crimes
in their jurisdiction involved a bias motivation. It has been argued that hate crime reporting wil
increase as more agencies adopt NIBRS because reporting the presence or absence of bias
motivations is built into NIBRS.35 In addition to making it easier for law enforcement agencies to
report hate crimes to the FBI, NIBRS provides data on a wider variety of offenses, including
those that were motivated by offenders’ bias against their victims, and data on the context of hate
crimes (e.g., locations where hate crimes occur, the relationship between al eged perpetrators and
victims of hate crimes, whether al eged offenders are residents of the community where they
committed their offenses, the weapons used in the offenses (if any), and the types and seriousness
of injuries sustained by hate crime victims).36
While the FBI has stopped accepting crime data from non-NIBRS compliant law enforcement
agencies, participation in the program is stil voluntary. If a law enforcement agency does not
31 For more information on the FBI’s transition to NIBRS, see CRS Report R46668, The National Incident-Based
Reporting System (NIBRS): Benefits and Issues.
32 U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Assistance, Edward Byrne Memorial
Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), updated February 2021, p. 4
(hereinafter, “JAG FAQs”).
33 For more information, see U.S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, SRS to NIBRS: The Path to
Better UCR Data, March 28, 2017, https://www.fbi.gov/services/cjis/cjis-link/srs-to-nibrs-the-path-to-better-ucr-data.
34 T he eight Part I offenses are homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary, larceny -theft, motor vehicle theft,
and arson.
35 James J. Nolan III, Yoshio Akiyama, and Samuel Berhanu, “T he Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990: Developing a
Method for Measuring the Occurrence of Hate Violence,” American Behavioral Scientist, vol. 46, no. 1 (September
2002), p. 146 (hereinafter, “ Nolan et al., ‘T he Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990’) .
36 Nolan et al., “T he Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990,” p. 147.
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believe it is worth the time and effort to adopt NIBRS and the state does not mandate that it
participates in the program, there is no federal mandate or incentive for the agency to participate.
Therefore, policymakers might have an interest in what steps Congress could take to promote
wide-scale adoption of the program. Congress could consider placing a condition on a program
such as JAG that would require law enforcement agencies to submit NIBRS data to the FBI or
face a penalty under the program. However, the JAG program already provides a financial
incentive to participate fully in the FBI’s crime reporting program. Half of a state’s al ocation is
based on its proportion of the average number of violent crimes reported in the United States over
the past three years, and al ocations for local governments are based on their proportion of the
average number of violent crimes reported in the state over the past three years.37 The Bureau of
Justice Assistance reports that NIBRS data wil be used to calculate JAG awards once NIBRS
replaces the summary reporting system.38 In addition, in order for local governments to be
eligible for a direct award under the program, they have to have submitted violent crime data for
3 of the past 10 years.39 Yet, even with these incentives some law enforcement agencies in the
United States do not participate in the UCR because compiling the data can be difficult and time
consuming, and many smal agencies might not have the resources needed to fully comply with
the FBI’s data collection and submission requirements. Thus, Congress could also consider
authorizing a new grant program that would provide funding to state and local governments to
cover expenses related to transitioning to NIBRS, such as purchasing new software and
computers, or training officers on how to use NIBRS.
While NIBRS might provide some administrative efficiency with regard to reporting hate crimes,
it does not address some of the other issues law enforcement agencies currently have with
reporting hate crimes through the UCR program. Implementing NIBRS does not address hate
crime victims being reluctant to report an offense to the police, the need for training for law
enforcement officers on how to identify potential hate crimes, or the need to improve law
enforcement agencies processes for investigating potential hate crimes, nor wil it resolve
differences between the HCSA and state hate crime definitions.
Author Information
Nathan James
Emily J. Hanson
Analyst in Crime Policy
Analyst in Social Policy
37 For more information on how allocations are calculated under the JAG program see CRS In Focus IF10691, The
Edward Byrne Mem orial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Program .
38 JAG FAQs, p. 4.
39 34 U.S.C. §10156(e)(3).
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