Audio Transcript

Mollie Halpern: For the first time ever, the FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics report provides data on gender and gender identity biases. These categories were added to the already existing bias categories of race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, and ethnicity.

The report shows out of the 5,928 bias-motivated incidents last year, 49 of them were related to gender and gender identity. Stephen Morris is the assistant director of the Criminal Justice Information Services Division…

Stephen Morris: Anytime we can expand data collection under any crime program, but particularly hate crime, it informs law enforcement executives making decisions when it comes to action on what to address, how to address it, where we need to put our resources.

Halpern: The 2013 report includes data from more than 15,000 law enforcement agencies from across the country which voluntarily submitted the information to the FBI.

Data collection on bias-motivated categories will continue to expand. In January, collection will begin on seven religion and anti-Arab bias categories.

Morris: It’s our goal as we collect more data on a specific type of crime, it gives us a better picture of that crime and what’s occurring.

Halpern: To see the hate crime report, visit www.fbi.gov. I’m Mollie Halpern of the Bureau, with FBI, This Week.

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