Schools are increasingly a location for hate crimes, FBI data shows

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January 30, 2024

By Isabela Espadas Barros Leal, NBC News

The most commonly reported offenses at schools are those targeting Black, LGBTQ and Jewish people.

Students march to demonstrate against the lack of action from their school concerning racial hate crimes (*AP Photo/Matt Rourke*).

Schools, colleges and universities were the third most common location for a hate crime to be committed in the United States from 2018 to 2022, new FBI data shows, with more than 4,300 reported offenses, or 7.7% of total offenses over those five years, taking place in an educational setting.

The number of reported hate crime offenses across all categories increased from 8,492 in 2018 to 13,346 in 2022, according to a report released Monday by the FBI. The most common location for a hate crime was in home or residential settings, followed by those occurring on highways, roads and alleys.

The number of offenses in school settings has fluctuated slightly year to year. It reached its lowest point — 500 offenses, or 3.9% of all reported hate crime offenses nationwide — in 2020, as a likely result of school closures during the pandemic, the report stated. The highest number was in 2022, when 1,336 offenses, or 10%, were reported at schools.

The data also revealed the number of reported offenses at schools based on their bias motivation: The most common were anti-Black (1,690), anti-LGBTQ (901) and anti-Jewish (745) offenses over the course of the five years.

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