Hate crimes in the U.S. rose sharply in 2021, with victims most commonly targeted because of their race or ethnicity, the FBI said Monday after earlier incomplete data had suggested a decline.
Newly compiled figures showed an 11.6% jump in hate crimes, to 9,065 in 2021 from 8,120 in 2020, with 79% of law-enforcement agencies reporting. Statistics released in December suggested such offenses fell, but the agency acknowledged the data were incomplete because thousands of police departments—including in New York and California—hadn’t yet reported their numbers to the federal government.
Los Angeles and New York City are now represented in the hate-crime report. Chicago provided two quarters’ worth of its data.
“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 Federal Bureau of Investigation, said Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “Hate crimes and the devastation they cause communities have no place in this country,” she added.
Hate crimes are defined as those motivated by prejudice based on race, gender and gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation or ethnicity. In 2021, such offenses were most commonly fueled by bias against Black people, followed by that against white people, gay men, Jewish people and Asian people, officials said.
The new data provide a more-reliable portrait of a period in which the U.S. was racked by high-profile hate crimes. Those crimes include a wave of anti-Asian attacks during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic, a mass shooting at an LGBT nightclub in Colorado where the accused gunman has been charged with hate crimes and a rise in antisemitic threats.
The Biden administration has called fighting hate crimes a priority, with the Justice Department charging more than 70 people in 60 cases across the country since January 2021.
Thorough reporting of hate crimes is crucial to preventing and prosecuting them, Ms. Gupta said.
The FBI blamed earlier data shortcomings on a new crime-data reporting system. While the new system includes more details about each incident, law-enforcement agencies, including some of the largest in the nation, had been slow to switch over and were unable to submit data in time last year, the bureau said.
Officials previously said the Justice Department had been working to help more agencies to transition to the new system, using more than $120 million in grant funding to speed that process.
Write to Sadie Gurman at sadie.gurman@wsj.com
