FBI Releases 2017 Hate Crimes Report

Yesterday the FBI released  its 2017 Hate Crime Statistics. The number of hate crime incidents increased 17% from last year-- 6,121 incidents in 2016 and 7,175 in 2017. However the year-to-year data may not be fully comparable since 1,000 additional agencies reported in 2017.  In 2017, hate crimes motivated by religious bias accounted for 1,564 incidents (totaling 1,679 offenses), or 22% of all incidents. This compares with 1,273 incidents in 2016. (See prior posting). Hate crimes based on race comprised 58% of all incidents in 2017.  Of the religiously-motivated hate crimes in 2017, some 938 (60%) were anti-Jewish while 273 (17%) were anti-Muslim. 73 incidents were anti-Catholic. ADL issued a press release analyzing the report.