Hate crimes are a much bigger problem than even the new FBI statistics show
By James Hohmann
November 14 at 9:28 AM
THE BIG IDEA: The FBI announced on Tuesday a disturbing 17 percent increase in reported hate crimes last year. Law enforcement agencies disclosed 7,175 hate crimes in America during 2017, up from 6,121 in 2016. This is the third consecutive year that reported hate crimes have increased, and it’s the single biggest spike since the surge of incidents targeting Muslims in 2001 after the attacks on Sept. 11.
But the reporting of these incidents remains uneven and inconsistent, both by victims and law enforcement. The definition of “hate crimes” varies by state, as do punishments, and even the federal standard has shifted over time. The FBI, which has pleaded for more cooperation from local law enforcement, notes that about 1,000 more agencies contributed information for this year’s report than last year’s. But those additional numbers don’t explain much of the increase. Massachusetts reports lots of incidents, for example, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there are more hate crimes per capita than in Mississippi, which experts say underreports.
-- “Of the hate crimes that likely occur each year in our country, only about 1 percent are reported in official federal statistics,” estimates Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute.
-- One especially startling figure: The FBI’s new report shows anti-Semitic hate crimes rose 37 percent in 2017. “The new FBI data comes less than a month after the worst anti-Semitic attack in U.S. history — a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue that killed 11 and wounded six,” Devlin Barrett notes. “The suspect in that attack has been charged with dozens of federal hate crimes, and that one incident alone accounted for nearly as many hate crime killings as were recorded all of last year in the United States: 15.”
-- But the Anti-Defamation League’s independent annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents, which the group has been tracking closely since 1979, found an even bigger jump of 57 percent in 2017, compared to 2016.
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