Some people have commented about the recent incident in Florida where five boys set fire to another. They expressed their "outrage" about why isn't it called a hate crime when the victim is white. Details revealed that this was not a "hate crime" and that race had nothing to do with the incident.
"Crimes of hatred and prejudice-from lynchings to cross burnings to vandalism of synagogues... the term "hate crime" did not enter the nation's vocabulary until the 1980s, when emerging hate groups like the Skinheads launched a wave of bias-related crime. The FBI began investigating what we now call hate crimes as far back as the early 1920s, when we opened our first Ku Klux Klan case. Today, we remain dedicated to working with state and local authorities to prevent these crimes and to bring to justice those who commit them."
The Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sex of any person. In 1995, the Sentencing Commission implemented these guidelines, which only apply to federal crimes. Following the passage of the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 and at the request of the Attorney General, the FBI has gathered and published hate crime statistics every year since 1992.
The Matthew Shepard and James Byrd, Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, passed as the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2009, expands existing federal hate crime law to include crimes motivated by a victim's actual or perceived gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, and drops the prerequisite that the victim be engaged in a federally-protected activity. The language passed refers to "Crimes of Violence." It specifically includes transgendered individuals and makes it explicit that the law does not restrict people's freedom of speech or association.
Basis of the hate crimes reported in 2007 (FBI data) :
| Basis of Crime | % of Crimes Reported | Sub-Category | % of Category |
| Race | 52% | Anti-black | 69% |
| Ethnicity | 14% | Anti-Hispanic | 62% |
| Religion | 17% | Anti-Jewish | 69% |
| Sexual Orientation | 16% | Anti-LGBT | 98% |
| Disability | < 1% |
Note: The FBI has noticed a 30% increase of crimes against the homeless since 1999, 75% of which were perpetrated by persons under the age of 25.
Per Capita rate of hate crimes, 2005 (FBI data)
| Sexual Orientation | Incidents | Adult Population | Incidents per million |
| Gays | 621 | ||
| Lesbians | 155 | ||
| Homosexual | 195 | ||
| Total | 971 | 10.9 mil | 89.1 |
| Bisexual | 25 | 6.5 | 3.95 |
| Heterosexual | 21 | 200.4 | .10 |
- Data based on 2005 FBI hate crime report assumes adult population of 217.8 million.
- Assumes 92% of all adults are heterosexual, 5% are homosexual and 3% bisexual.
Note: Some religious and social conservatives with their own anti-LGBT agendas, believe this figure is much lower. Some LGBT groups and their supporters believe the percentage is much higher. - Assumes all victims were adults, 18 or older.
- Based on FBI data, a homosexual is about 850 times more likely to be the victim of a hate crime motivated by his/her sexual orientation than is a heterosexual.
Note: The number of reported hate crimes in 2007 is 8% higher than the 2005 figures.
How accurate are these figures?
One study of gay, lesbian and bisexual adults showed that 41% reported being a victim of a hate crime at sometime during their life after the age of 16. Assuming that 8% of all adults are LGBT, at the time of the study, this means that about 7,000,000 had been victimized during their lifetime out of a total of about 17,000,000,000 individuals. This annualizes to at least 100,000 hate crimes against LGBTs per year (7,000,000 divided by 60 years).
Even this number may be a low estimate. I have been the subject of anti-gay hate crimes on three separate occasions and physical and verbal assaults twice, but they were either not reported or not treated by law enforcement as hate crimes. Many times, even if the crime is reported, the police may refuse to recognize it as such, hence the provisions in the new law, or had no law on the books in their jurisdiction to do so.
Because only about 1,500 hate crimes based on sexual orientation are actually recorded by police per year on average, one must conclude that a miniscule percentage of hate crimes are actually reported to the police by gays and lesbians.
Regarding enhanced penalties for hate crimes, according to former Chief Justice Rehnquist: "this conduct is thought to inflict greater individual and societal harm.... bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest."
Some people object to penalty-enhancement and federal prosecution laws because they believe they offer preferred protection to certain individuals over others, saying that "all crimes are hate crimes." This is categorically not true. Mugging someone at random to steal a wallet or purse for monetary gain is not a hate crime. Beating someone senseless because of who they are is.