US hate crimes jumped in 2021 - FBI

Crimes motivated by hate and bias increased 11.6% in 2021, according to updated FBI figures.

More than 9,000 incidents were tallied in the report, the highest number since the FBI started tracking the data in 1990.

This year's report is incomplete due to a nationwide transition to a new method of reporting.

But the existing numbers show a sharp rise in attacks against people of Asian descent.

The report relies on data from police departments covering more than 91% of the US population, but leaves out thousands of agencies that did not report data in time.

Hate crimes are criminal activities motivated by bias against a particular race, ethnicity, ancestry, religion, sexual orientation, disability, gender or gender identity.

Most of the recorded crimes were categorised as assault, intimidation or vandalism. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also tallied 9 murders, 13 rapes and more than 700 hate-motivated thefts, robberies and burglaries.

The numbers were generally up across the board, but some groups registered particularly large increases in crimes against them. Anti-Asian hate crimes more than doubled, to 746 incidents in 2021 compared with 279 in 2020. Anti-LGBT incidents were up 65%.

Nearly two-thirds of the recorded crimes involve racial or ethnic hate. Just under half of those incidents were motivated by anti-African American hate, while around 20% involved anti-white hate.

More than 30% of the crimes motivated by religious hate were anti-Jewish, and nearly 20% were anti-Sikh.

"In the Sikh community, we feel we are an outlier, particularly because of our distinct religious identity," said Sim J Singh Attariwala, senior policy and advocacy manager of the Sikh Coalition. "But hate crimes across the nation are up and we're worried about the overall climate."

A 1990 law requires the US justice department to collect hate crimes statistics, but for decades the effort has been hampered because of America's patchwork of law enforcement agencies, with varying levels of statistical rigor.

The FBI's move to a new system for collecting data resulted in large gaps in the initial 2021 figures, which were released late last year.

The agency said it added additional figures covering huge chunks of the country in order to produce Monday's supplemental report.

Still missing from these figures are reports from more than 3,000 US agencies.

Last year, Congress passed the Covid Hate Crimes Act with the aim of making reporting such crimes easier and boosting funds for prevention and investigations.

"Hate crimes and the devastation they cause communities have no place in this country," Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta said in a statement.

"We are continuing to work with state and local law enforcement agencies across the country to increase the reporting of hate crime statistics to the FBI," she said.

Last week, a report by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a leading Jewish advocacy group, reported that white nationalist propaganda jumped 38% in 2022.

The group found that three groups, Patriot Front, Goyim Defense League and White Lives Matter, were responsible for the 93% of propaganda distribution.

Researchers at the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found that hate crimes increased by nearly 5% in the first half of 2022.

Those researchers say hate crimes are at record levels in a number of states across the country, and that large increases have been recorded in some of the nation's biggest cities.

In one of last year's worst incidents, an 18-year-old motivated by race hate and eco-fascist ideas killed 10 African-Americans in a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.