Schools, colleges and universities were the third most common location for a hate crime to be committed in the United States from 2018 to 2022, new FBI data shows, with more than 4,300 reported offenses, or 7.7% of total offenses over those five years, taking place in an educational setting.
The number of reported hate crime offenses across all categories increased from 8,492 in 2018 to 13,346 in 2022, according to a report released Monday by the FBI. The most common location for a hate crime was in home or residential settings, followed by those occurring on highways, roads and alleys.
The number of offenses in school settings has fluctuated slightly year to year. It reached its lowest point — 500 offenses, or 3.9% of all reported hate crime offenses nationwide — in 2020, as a likely result of school closures during the pandemic, the report stated. The highest number was in 2022, when 1,336 offenses, or 10%, were reported at schools.
The data also revealed the number of reported offenses at schools based on their bias motivation: The most common were anti-Black (1,690), anti-LGBTQ (901) and anti-Jewish (745) offenses over the course of the five years.
When breaking down the anti-LGBTQ offenses at schools further, the most common were those involving a mixed group of LGBTQ individuals (342) and those against gay men (306).
Educational settings were divided into three categories in the report: “college/university,” “elementary/secondary” and “unspecified school/college.” More than half of all hate crime offenses reported in an educational setting took place at an elementary or secondary school, with a combined total of 2,815 from 2018-2022. The most common offense at schools was intimidation, followed by what the study grouped as “destruction/damage/vandalism and “simple assault.”
In the FBI’s most recent overall hate crimes report, the same three groups were found to be the most common targets. More than half of race-based crimes in 2022 targeted Black people, and more than half of religious-based crimes targeted Jews. The data also pointed to a nearly 40% increase in anti-transgender crimes compared to the prior year.
Experts have long cautioned that hate crimes tend to go unreported by victims and local law enforcement.
Although not included in the FBI’s school hate crime report, over the last year there have been several high-profile hate crimes in the U.S.
In July, O’Shae Sibley, a professional dancer and choreographer, was stabbed to death in what police later said was an anti-gay hate crime. In the weeks following the Oct. 7 Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy was stabbed to death in his Illinois home by his landlord, who was accused of being motivated by hate. In Jacksonville, Florida, a white gunman opened fire in a Dollar General store last summer, killing three Black people. And in December, a man was indicted on multiple hate crime charges in connection with the punching of an Israeli tourist in Times Square two months earlier.
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