FBI's 2021 hate-crimes report raises questions

Despite increasing concerns about growing hate crimes across the United States, a federal tally found bias crimes declined in 2021, but the report is being questioned because thousands of law enforcement agencies didn't provide data on hate crimes to the FBI last year.

An annual FBI report released Monday found there were 7,262 hate crimes in 2021, down from 8,263 in 2020, the biggest decrease in two decades.

But only about 65 percent of local police departments reported hate crimes last year, down from more than 90 percent the year before.

That means it's impossible to draw any meaningful conclusions about hate crime trends year over year, the FBI said Monday.

Thousands of jurisdictions did not report crime data under the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), which federal authorities have phased in since 2016 with the hope of gaining more crime data.

The nation's two largest cities, New York and Los Angeles, didn't provide data. The third-largest city, Chicago, reported zero, according to the FBI report. New York and California have typically contributed among the highest number of hate crimes.

This year, the FBI moved to the new reporting system, and only about 11,883 of 18,812 agencies have incorporated the system into their networks.

"While a large number of contributors were successful in making the transition, many others faced challenges and were unable to modify their systems to begin submitting data," the FBI acknowledged.

In Florida, where 109 hate crimes were reported in 2020, two of the state's 757 law enforcement agencies submitted data to the FBI in 2021, and one hate crime was reported.

The number of hate crimes in California fell from 1,339 in 2020 to 73 in 2021, as 15 of 740 police agencies uploaded data. Hate crimes in New York dropped from 463 in 2020 to 62 in 2021, as 124 of 593 jurisdictions submitted data to the FBI.

The new reporting system does provide additional information gathered about victims, offenders, and those arrested, including age, sex and race as well as a description of any relationship between victim and offender.

In a statement, Ted Deutch, CEO of the American Jewish Committee, called the new FBI report "woefully inadequate". He noted 35 major US cities reported zero hate crimes in 2021.

The FBI defines a hate crime as attacks prompted by a victim's "race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity".

According to a survey released by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, hate crimes increased by 15 to 25 percent in 52 jurisdictions between 2020 and 2021.

The steepest increases were in attacks against Asian Americans, said the center's director, Brian Levin, The New York Times reported.

"The data need not be perfect," Levin told the Los Angeles Times. "But when it is this incomplete, it becomes an obstacle, because the average American will look at it and say, 'Oh, OK, hate crimes are down.'"

According to a Brandeis Center press release, in contrast to the FBI's data, other monitors have "uniformly reported substantial increases in antisemitic hate crimes last year. In 2021, for example, the Anti-Defamation League received more reports of antisemitic incidents than in any other year on record".

The Anti-Defamation League said the FBI data suggested that if more jurisdictions had reported their figures for antisemitic attacks, the report "likely would have shown record-high numbers".

"The failure by major states and cities across the country to report hate crime data essentially — and inexcusably — erases the lived experience of marginalized communities across the country," Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the league, said in a statement Monday.