Out of 1,864 suspects in matters involving federal hate crimes, just 330 (17%) were prosecuted. Over half (55%) of the suspects who weren't prosecuted were declined due to insufficient evidence. The second most-common reason was the prioritization of federal resources, followed by the suspect being subject to the authority of another jurisdiction and the federal government lacking legal jurisdiction to file charges.
Nearly one-third of hate crime suspects were referred to US attorneys in judicial districts in five states: California, Michigan, Texas, Mississippi and Ohio.
From 2015 to 2019, nearly half of the suspects referred to US attorneys were suspected of violating the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which prohibits willfully causing or attempting to cause bodily injury with a dangerous weapon due to a person's actual or perceived, race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
Despite rising numbers of reported hate crimes in recent years, the DOJ report stated that the number of hate crime matters investigated fell by 8% from the 2005 to 2009 period compared to the 2015 to 2019 period.
Over 92% of the defendants who were brought to US district courts were convicted. From 2005 to 2019, all but 10 states saw at least one hate crime conviction, with 40% of the convicted hate crimes occurring in districts in six states: New York, California, Texas, Arkansas, Tennessee and Pennsylvania.
The FBI reported last November that 7,314 hate crimes were reported in the US in 2019, one of the highest numbers in the past two decades.
The Department of Justice has reported that US residents experienced about 250,000 hate crimes on average each year from 2004 to 2015. The DOJ also reported that about half of the crimes it counted as hate crimes were not reported to police and therefore wouldn’t be in the FBI’s statistics.