California police reported the highest number of hate crimes of any state last year, more than 25 percent of the total for the country, the FBI said. There were a total of 2,116 bias incidents in the state in 1998. New Jersey and New York ranked second and third with 813 and 778, respectively, Massachusetts reported 491 and Michigan 427. In contrast, Iowa, the District of Columbia, North Dakota, Mississippi and Arkansas reported three or fewer hate crimes each.
Bias crimes range from verbal harassment to arson, violent assaults and even murder.
The FBI's new report on hate crimes statistics was released the day after a budget agreement between Congress and the White House apparently scotched efforts to attach bias crime legislation to a federal spending bill. Juries also reached verdicts this week in two of the country's most notorious recent hate killings, the dragging death of a black man in Texas and the brutal killing of a gay college student in Wyoming. Provides regional breakdown Culled from data provided by some 10,000 law enforcement agencies in 46 states and the District of Columbia that have jurisdiction over 80 percent of the country's population, the FBI's report breaks down the raw figures into regions, types of offenses and general locations. The numbers represent the latest data available, but the statistics may not be wholly representative, the FBI warned, because not every participating law enforcement agency supplied information for the 12 months of the year. Some states also do a better job of gathering statistics.