On November 25, the FBI released its annual report, "Hate Crime Statistics 2001." The 136-page jurisdiction-by-jurisdiction report provides hate crime data collected under the 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act. This report is available online at: http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/01hate.pdf

Highlights from the 2001 hate crime data:

• While the overall number of crimes reported to the FBI in 2001 increased slightly (2.1%), reported hate crimes increased dramatically from 8,063 in 2000 to 9,730 in 2001 (a 20.7% increase).
• The 9,730 hate crime incidents reported to the FBI involved 11,451 separate offenses, 12,020 victims, and 9,239 known offenders.
• In 2001, 1,667 more hate crime incidents were reported than in 2000. Racial bias again represented the largest percentage of bias-motivated incidents (44.9%), followed by Ethnic/National Origin Bias (21.6%), Religious Bias (18.8%), Sexual Orientation Bias (14.3%), and Disability Bias (0.4%).
• Of the 9,730 incidents, 6,330 were crimes against persons, 3,607 were crimes against property, and the remaining 76 were crimes against society.
• Anti-Semitic crimes comprised the majority of religious bias incidents. 1,043 were reported, a slight decrease from 1,119 in 2000. Overall, crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions comprised 10.7% of all the bias-motivated crimes, and 57% of the religious-based crime incidents.
• Anti-black bias was the most prevalent racial motivation, with 2,899 incidents (29.8% of all hate crimes); anti-male homosexual bias was the most common sexual orientation motivation, with 980 incidents (10.1% of all hate crimes).
• We do not yet know how many of the 2001 reported hate crimes were �backlash incidents� directed at individuals in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks. We do know that the number of reported "anti-Islamic" crimes increased from 28 in 2000 to 481 in 2001, which represents an increase of over 1600%. In addition, the number of hate crimes directed at individuals on the basis of their national origin/ethnicity doubled -- from 911 in 2000 to 2,098 in 2001.
• The number of national law enforcement agencies reporting to the FBI in 2001 increased slightly from 11,690 to 11,987. However, of the 11,987 that participated, only 2,106 agencies (17.6%) reported any hate crime, a slight increase from the 16.2% that reported incidents in 2000. Thus, for 2001, 9,881 agencies (82.4%) reported zero hate crimes.
• Of the 9,239 identified hate crime offenders, the majority were white (6,054, or 65.5%); 20.4% were black, 8.2% were of unknown race, and the remainder were of other races or multiple races.
• The five states with the highest numbers of hate crime were: California (2,246 incidents, 23.1% of total reported incidents), New Jersey (767, 7.9%), New York (712, 7.3%), Massachusetts (584, 6.0%), and Michigan (442, 4.5%). These five states comprise 48.8% of all incidents reported in the United States.
• Hawaii was the only state that did not participate in reporting hate crime to the FBI; Alabama participated but affirmatively reported zero hate crime for 2001.