Schools are third-highest location for hate crimes: FBI

(NEW YORK) — Schools are the third-highest location for hate crimes in the United States, with as much as 10% of all reported hate crimes in 2022 happening at schools across the country, according to a new report the FBI released Monday.

Secondary schools — comprised of preschool to 12th grade — saw the highest amount of hate crimes from 2018 to 2022, the report found.

In 2022, there were more than 1,300 reported hate crimes at schools and college campuses — 890 of which happened at secondary schools that year, the FBI found.

“During these five years, over 30 percent of juvenile victims of hate crimes, experienced the offense at school and nearly 36 percent of juvenile offenders committed the offense at school,” the report said.

Hate crimes at school came in behind hate crimes committed at home and on the road, the FBI found.

School hate crimes saw an increase in 2022 — the most recent year of data obtained by the FBI.

The 2022 uptick is noticeable compared to the previous two years when the COVID-19 pandemic forced many students from traditional places of learning such as schools and college campuses. Also, there was a drop from 2019 to 2020 when the pandemic occurred. The FBI noted in its report that a 3.9% drop in reported of hate crimes from 2019 to 2020 “may have been due to pandemic-related stay-at-home orders causing schools to shift from in-person classes to online learning.”

Asked by reporters Monday about the impact of the pandemic on the hate crime data, FBI officials did not answer.

There is a more common time of year for hate crimes in schools, according to the FBI.

“The most common quarter for the occurrence of hate crimes reported at schools during the entire five-year period from 2018 to 2022 was October – December, with nearly a third (32.7 percent) of offenses reported for this quarter,” the report said.

During the five-year period, the FBI found the month of October had four hate crime offenses per day in schools across the country.

Anti-Black or African American hate crimes were the highest with 1,690 offenses that took place at schools over the five-year period, followed by anti-Jewish hate crimes, which saw 745 and anti-LGBTQ, which saw 741, according to the FBI.

In 2022, there were more hate crime offenses than the previous years in the five-year FBI review. The FBI found that there were 11,643 reported hate crime incidents involving 13,346 related offenses reported in 2022. The FBI defines an “incident” as one or more offenses committed by the same offender, or group of offenders acting together at the same time and place — therefore, “an incident may involve more than one offense,” the FBI wrote in the report.

While 2022 had the most overall reported hate crime offenses, 2020 was not far behind with 12,895, and 2021 had 12,470, according to the FBI. There were nearly 5,000 more reported hate offenses in 2022 than in 2018, the FBI report said.

Intimidation was the biggest form of hate crime, according to the FBI, followed by vandalism and simple assault.

On the call with reporters, the FBI said it wants the report to “draw attention to the data,” and said state and local law enforcement are best to offer resources to schools — not the FBI.