The FBI recorded 11,679 hate crime incidents in the United States in 2024, involving 13,683 individual offenses and 14,243 victims, according to hate crime statistics released on August 5, 2025.1United States Department of Justice. Hate Crimes – Facts and Statistics Race, ethnicity, or ancestry motivated more than half of those incidents. Religion drove roughly a quarter, and sexual orientation another 17 percent. The real total is almost certainly higher, because reporting is voluntary for local agencies and many victims never call the police at all.
Where the Numbers Stand in 2024
The 2024 figure of 11,679 incidents represents a slight dip from 2023, when agencies reported 11,862 incidents, and a small increase over 2022’s 11,634.2Community Relations Service. 2023 FBI Hate Crimes Statistics Those three years have all landed above 11,000, a level the FBI had not reached before. In 2020 the count was 8,263, and pre-pandemic totals typically ran between 7,000 and 8,000.3Federal Bureau of Investigation. FBI Releases Updated 2020 Hate Crime Statistics
The gap between incidents and offenses matters when reading these numbers. One incident can contain more than one offense. Someone who spray-paints a slur and then assaults the property owner produces two offenses in a single incident.
The 2021 Data Break
Anyone comparing recent totals to older ones needs to know about a reporting shift that scrambles the trendline. On January 1, 2021, the FBI moved its data collection from the older Summary Reporting System to the more detailed National Incident-Based Reporting System.4Federal Bureau of Investigation. National Incident-Based Reporting System Several of the country’s largest police agencies, along with some entire states, failed to complete the transition on time. Participation dropped from roughly 15,000 agencies to 11,834, covering only 64.8 percent of the population. A supplemental report later raised coverage to 91.1 percent, but 2021 remains a year with substantially incomplete data.5United States Department of Justice. Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta Issues Statement on the FBI’s Supplemental 2021 Hate Crime Statistics
By 2024, participation had largely recovered. Whether the jump above 11,000 incidents reflects a genuine rise in bias-motivated crime, better reporting by more agencies, or both is not something the data alone can settle. The honest answer is probably both.
Breakdown by Bias Motive
Single-bias incidents (cases involving one type of prejudice) accounted for most of the 2024 total. Victims fell into six categories:1United States Department of Justice. Hate Crimes – Facts and Statistics
- Race, ethnicity, or ancestry: 53.2 percent
- Religion: 23.5 percent
- Sexual orientation: 17.2 percent
- Gender identity: 3.9 percent
- Disability: 1.3 percent
- Gender: 0.9 percent
Just over 3 percent of 2024 incidents were multi-bias, meaning the victim was targeted for a combination of characteristics.
Race, Ethnicity, and Ancestry
Anti-Black bias is the single largest driver of hate crime in the country and has been for as long as the FBI has published this data. In 2024, agencies recorded 3,004 anti-Black incidents, a 9 percent drop from 2023 but still far larger than any other subcategory.1United States Department of Justice. Hate Crimes – Facts and Statistics Anti-Black cases have made up roughly half of all race-based hate crimes for decades; in 2023 they were 51.3 percent of that category.2Community Relations Service. 2023 FBI Hate Crimes Statistics Anti-Asian, anti-Hispanic, and anti-White incidents fill out the rest, with anti-Asian numbers cooling from their pandemic-era peak but still elevated.
Religion
Anti-Jewish incidents dominate the religion category. In 2024 there were 1,938 of them, up from 1,832 in 2023 and the highest total since the FBI began publishing this data. That amounts to roughly 70 percent of all religion-motivated hate crimes in a year when Jewish Americans make up about 2 percent of the U.S. population.1United States Department of Justice. Hate Crimes – Facts and Statistics Anti-Islamic incidents form the next largest share and tend to fluctuate with geopolitical events.
Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity
Together, sexual orientation and gender identity accounted for about one in five victims in 2024.1United States Department of Justice. Hate Crimes – Facts and Statistics In 2019, the FBI reported 1,429 victims of sexual-orientation bias, with anti-gay male bias motivating nearly 62 percent of those cases. Gender-identity crimes that year included 175 anti-transgender victims and 52 anti-gender-nonconforming victims.6Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hate Crime Statistics – Victims Both subcategories have trended upward since.
Disability and Gender
Disability and gender bias together account for just over 2 percent of victims, though the raw counts still run into the hundreds each year.1United States Department of Justice. Hate Crimes – Facts and Statistics Disability cases frequently involve people with intellectual or developmental disabilities, and they often go unreported because victims may struggle to communicate what happened or may not recognize a crime occurred. Gender bias is relatively new to federal tracking, added after the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act expanded the covered categories in 2009.
Where These Crimes Happen
Roughly a quarter of hate crime incidents occur in or near the victim’s home. About 18 percent happen on streets and sidewalks, around 10 percent at schools and colleges, and about 4 percent at houses of worship. The rest scatter across parking lots, restaurants, commercial buildings, and other locations.7Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hate Crime Statistics – Location Type
The pattern shifts by bias type. Religion-motivated crimes are far more likely to happen at religious sites, about 17 percent of the time compared to 4 percent overall. Sexual-orientation and gender-identity crimes occur on streets and sidewalks at higher rates, between 22 and 25 percent.7Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hate Crime Statistics – Location Type
Why the Real Number Is Much Higher
The FBI’s totals almost certainly undercount what actually happens. The Bureau of Justice Statistics runs a separate measure called the National Crime Victimization Survey, which interviews about 77,600 people a year about their experiences with crime, including incidents never reported to police. That survey consistently produces hate crime estimates many times higher than the FBI’s figures. In 2019, it found roughly 1.0 violent hate crime victimization per 1,000 people age 12 and older, a rate that implies hundreds of thousands of incidents nationally compared to the roughly 7,300 the FBI recorded that year.8Bureau of Justice Statistics. Hate Crime Reported by Victims and Police
Several forces widen this gap. Many victims never contact police because they fear retaliation, distrust law enforcement, or believe nothing will come of a report. Verbal threats and harassment are especially underreported. Even when a victim does file a report, the responding officer may not recognize or classify the incident as bias-motivated, and it enters the system as a generic assault or vandalism.
Agency participation compounds the problem. Federal law requires the Attorney General to collect the data, but state and local agencies are not all required to submit it. Only about half of states require local agencies to collect and submit hate crime data.9United States Department of Justice. Hate Crimes – Laws and Policies The result is a patchwork in which a jurisdiction that reports zero incidents because it never submitted anything looks identical to one with genuinely no incidents. When comparing rates between cities or states, keep that structural gap in mind.
Congress attempted to shrink the gap with the Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act, signed on May 20, 2021 and codified at 34 U.S.C. ยง 30507. The law authorizes grants to help state and local agencies adopt the incident-based reporting system and train staff to identify hate crimes correctly. Agencies that accept the funding must begin reporting hate crime data to the FBI within three years or repay the money.10Office of the Law Revision Counsel. 34 USC 30507 – Jabara-Heyer NO HATE Act
How to Report a Hate Crime
To report an incident, start with local law enforcement. For the crime to appear in the FBI’s annual statistics, the local agency has to classify it as bias-motivated and submit it through the national reporting system. Be specific about why you believe bias played a role: slurs used, symbols displayed, prior threats, patterns you’ve noticed.
You can also report directly to the FBI by calling 1-800-CALL-FBI or submitting a tip at tips.fbi.gov. Reports can be anonymous.11Federal Bureau of Investigation. Hate Crimes Reporting to both local police and the FBI is not redundant. Local reports feed the statistical database. Federal reports trigger a separate evaluation of whether federal charges may apply.