(LEX 18) — The FBI has released national and state-by-state hate crime statistics for 2021. It shows that 2021 saw the third-highest reported hate crimes across the country in the last decade, but critics say it paints an incomplete picture.
As the FBI released those statistics Monday, one thing they noted was that a significant number of agencies didn't report data before the deadline this year. Critics expect the 2021 data is likely an undercount compared to previous years.
Here in Kentucky, agencies have been fairly consistent in reporting hate crime data. In 2021, 90% of agencies reported data, according to the FBI, and the numbers locally show some promise.
There were 130 incidents reported in Kentucky in 2021, which is the lowest in the past decade. 2017 saw the most reported incidents in the past decade with 380. The FBI website breaks down the kind of bias associated with the reported hate crimes. In seven of the last 10 years, the most common hate crimes in Kentucky were anti-Black.
Nationally, 2021 saw the third-highest number of reported hate crimes in a decade. Again, that's with a significant drop-off in the number of agencies submitting data. Monday, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas talked about his own family's experience with anti-Semitism and his commitment to fighting hate crimes.
"It's extraordinarily personal. My mother's experience very much shaped our understanding of the vulnerability and fragility of life and it helps drive the imperative to eradicate hate and make people safe," Mayorkas said.
The FBI said the reason for the drop-off in data reporting was that the organization has moved to a new reporting system that collects more detailed information about individual hate crimes, but a lot of law enforcement agencies have not yet made the transition to that program.
