Hate crimes across the United States spiked 17 percent in 2017, including a 37-percent increase in anti-Semitic hate crimes, according to a report released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI)
The FBI’s annual study of reported hate crimes in the United States shows that in 2017, there were 7,175 hate crime incidents reported to the federal agency by local law enforcement agencies. That number is up from 6,121 in 2016. The FBI’s annual hate crimes report defines hate crimes as those motivated by bias based on a person’s race, religion or sexual orientation, among other categories.
Of the reported hate crime incidents, 57.6 percent were motivated by race or ethnicity. Of these racially motivated hate crimes, African Americans were the victims in nearly one half of the incidents.
There were 214 hate crimes on college campuses in 2017 that were reported to the FBI. Of these 129 were related to race or ethnicity.
The sharp increase in hate crimes in 2017 came even as overall violent crime in America fell slightly, by 0.2 percent, after increases in 2015 and 2016, the report stated.
