In U.S., 1 in 5 Reported Hate Crimes Target Gay or Bi Victims

The FBI's latest annual report on hate crime statistics, released Monday, included crimes committed based on the victim's gender identity for the first time ever.

Transgender and gender-nonconforming people were the targets of 0.5 percent of all reported hate crimes motivated by a single bias in 2013, according to the report. Transgender people make up 0.3 percent of the greater U.S. population, according to estimates by the Williams Institute at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Law enforcement agencies reported 5,928 hate crime incidents involving 6,933 offenses to the FBI in 2013. Of those reported incidents, 48.5 percent of reported single-bias hate crimes were motivated by race, followed by 20.8 percent motivated by a victim's sexual orientation, and 17.4 percent targeting people based on religious bias. Of the 1,402 hate-crime offenses based on sexual orientation, 60.6 percent were classified as gay male-targeted bias.

There was a slight decrease in the number of hate crimes against gay, lesbian, and bisexual people in 2013 -- 1,233 incidents versus 1,299 in 2012, 1,293 in 2011, and 1,277 in 2010.

David Stacy, the Human Rights Campaign's director of government affairs, says hate crimes are unique among violent crimes because they "generate fear and insecurity for the entire community they target."

The organization added that the number of incidents regarding transgender and gender-nonconforming people was low, suggesting "that law enforcement are mischaracterizing hate based crimes as ones based on either sexual orientation or gender." And while more law enforcement agencies have contributed data to the FBI than ever, thousands still did not submit data.

According to the HRC, at least one agency that serves a population exceeding 250,000 people did not submit data, nor did at least seven agencies serving populations of 100,000 to 250,000.