Community Justice Action Fund Responds to New Hate Crime FBI Data
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 31, 2021
Press Contact:
Community Justice Action Fund
Sawyeh Maghsoodloo
COMMUNITY JUSTICE ACTION FUND RESPONDS TO NEW FBI HATE CRIME DATA THAT REVEALED HIGHEST REPORTED HATE CRIMES IN 12 YEARS, CALLS FOR BETTER DATA REPORTING
Washington, D.C.— Today, the Community Justice Action Fund responded to newly released data from the FBI showing that more hate crimes were reported in 2020 than in the past 12 years. Hate-fueled individuals continue to unjustly target communities of color, sexual minorities, and religious minorities, and this hate too often comes armed with a gun.
Criminologists and advocates have long called for better reporting of FBI hate crime data, which currently only captures a tiny fraction of hate-motivated violence happening every day. In 2020, 85 percent of participating agencies reported zero hate crimes to the FBI. In total, law enforcement agencies reported 7,759 hate crimes to the FBI in 2020, a 6 percent increase from 2019. Some key findings from the latest data include:
The vast majority of reported hate crimes were motivated by bias against race or ethnicity, sexual orientation, or religion.
Anti-Black hate crimes reported to the FBI saw a 43 percent increase in 2020 compared to 2019, amounting to 2,755 hate crime incidents—the largest share of any identity group.
Hate crimes motivated by Anti-Asian bias saw a 73 percent increase over 2019, amounting to 274 reported incidents in 2020.
The picture is incomplete—just 15 percent of participating law enforcement agencies across the United States submitted any hate crime incident reports to this dataset in 2020. In other words, 85 percent of participating agencies reported no hate crimes.
Greg Jackson, Executive Director of Community Justice Action Fund stated, “The rising tide of hate and bias in our country continues to destroy our communities in a society that has already stacked the cards against us. As we work to end gun violence, we know that it starts with addressing the root causes, while working everyday to address the bias and hate fueling the cycle of violence. ”
“We cannot effectively solve a problem if we do not understand the full scope of it.” said Sawyeh Maghsoodloo, State Policy Director of Community Justice Action Fund, “Law enforcement agencies must be held accountable. They must stop withholding hate crime data from the public.“
The lack of mandatory hate crime data reporting means that the FBI data, while helpful, paints a vastly incomplete picture of the epidemic of hate in this country. CJAF calls on lawmakers to require hate crime data reporting from all law enforcement agencies in their jurisdiction.
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The Community Justice Action Fund, a project of Tides Advocacy, is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization building power for and with communities of color to end gun violence.