WASHINGTON — Reports of hate crimes against gays and religious groups increased sharply in 2008, according to FBI data released Monday, with cautions that the rise could be a result of better tracking.
Overall, the number of reported hate crime incidents increased about 2 percent. These same figures show a nearly 11 percent increase in hate crime offenses based on sexual orientation, and a nearly 9 percent increase in hate crime offenses based on religion.
The largest category, racially motivated hate crimes, fell less than 1 percent.
Among all categories of hate crimes, roughly a third are vandalism or property damage. About 30 percent involve intimidation of some kind, and another 30 percent were physical attacks.
In total, there were 7,783 hate crimes reported to the FBI last year, and seven murders were categorized as hate crimes.
The FBI does not compare year-to-year trends in hate crimes, saying the number of agencies reporting changes too much. In fact, the bureau cautioned that the increase reported Monday might well be due to more agencies tracking such incidents.
Brian Levin, director for the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University-San Bernardino, warned that the national numbers may be misleading because some states — such as California, New Jersey and Ohio — are good at reporting hate crimes while others — Georgia, Hawaii, Mississippi and Pennsylvania — are not.
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