New data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shows that the majority of the hate crimes in Tennessee from 2022 were on the basis of race and ethnicity. The report also found that most of these crimes targeted Black people.
The FBI said that the data comes from voluntary reporting to the organization through the National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS). Out of 413 participating Tennessee law enforcement agencies, 399 of them submitted data.
A hate crime is defined by the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program as “a committed criminal offense which is motivated, in whole or in part, by the offender’s bias(es) against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.”
“Hate crimes are often committed based on differences in personal characteristics such as appearance, language, nationality or religion,” said the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). “The key element of any hate crime is the presence of a bias motivation. The criminal act alone does not define a hate crime; rather the investigation of the crime must conclude that the offender was bias-motivated.”
Out of the 94 reported crimes. 43 were considered “Anti-Black or African American.” The second highest category were “Anti-White” crimes, with 10 being reported.
The first year that hate crimes were reported entirely through the NIBRS was in 2021. According to data from that year, most of Tennessee’s crimes were motivated by race and ethnicity, accounting for 91 (61.9 percent) incidents.
The FBI also notes that since crime is a “sociological phenomenon influenced by a variety of factors,” and that there are differing levels of participation over time, they discourage using data as a way to measure law enforcement effectiveness.
Nationally, there were 11, 643 hate crime incidents reported in 2022. The report also notes that only 14,660 law enforcement agencies participated in crime reporting, out of more than 18,800 nation-wide. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that this is the “fifth consecutive year of declining participation.”
