Hate crimes skyrocketed over a five-year period ending in 2022 — and schools were the third most common location where such offenses were reported, according to a newly released FBI report.
As much as 10% of all hate crimes in 2022 happened between students on school campuses, the special report states. The most common location was homes, followed by highways and roads, the FBI found.
The number of reported hate crime incidents increased each year from the prior year — beginning with 7,181 incidents in 2018 and ending with 11,643 incidents in 2022.
“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 stated.
Elementary schools — defined as preschool to 12th grade in the report — saw more hate crimes than universities and colleges for every year cited.
The FBI report did not differentiate between grade school, middle school and high school.
The most frequent type of hate reported at schools was anti-Black crimes — with 1,690 such offenses between 2018 and 2022 — followed by antisemitic crimes at 745 and anti-LGBTQ at 342.
Offenses defined as “intimidation” were the number-one most common occurrence at 1,623 over the five years then came vandalism at 1,543 and simple assault at 826.
The FBI also found that hate crimes were the most frequent in October — which saw four hate crime offenses a day throughout the US.
“This examination of reported bias-motivated offenses goes beyond basic counts of hate crime occurring at school locations and provides a deeper understanding of conspicuous similarities amongst these events,” the FBI said in its report.
“Analyzing commonalities of reported hate crime offenses in schools can facilitate strategies to mitigate or prevent these offenses in the future.”