By Forum Staff
New York State has seen a surge in hate crimes over the last five years with 1,089 reported instances in 2023, marking the highest number since data collection and annual reporting were mandated by New York’s Hates Crimes Act of 2000, according to a recent report by State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli. The number is 69 percent more than in 2019.
Except for 2020, which may reflect artificially low reporting due to COVID, there has been a steady rise in hate crimes over the past five years, with the number of reported incidents more than doubling between 2018 and 2023. Moreover, the available data may not capture all relevant crimes, as underreporting may occur for several reasons. Victims may be hesitant to report incidents due to reasons that include language barriers, fear of retaliation, mistrust in law enforcement or lack of confidence that justice will be served.
A decade ago, New York City and the rest of the state reported roughly equal shares of hate crime incidents. However, between 2013 and 2019, reported hate crime incidents in New York City increased by one-third, but declined by 25.8 percent in the rest of the state. Between 2019 and 2023, these incidents grew in New York City (59.3 percent) and more rapidly in the rest of the state (87.5 percent). In 2023, the New York City Police Department reported 669 hate crimes, an increase of 12.6 percent from 2022. In the rest of the state, the Division of Criminal Justice Services (DCJS) reported 420 incidents in 2023, a 12.9 percent increase from the year before.
DiNapoli’s report also found:
- Hate crimes targeting individuals and property both rose since 2018, but hate crimes involving assaults on people grew faster and were more common than property crimes starting in 2021. In 2018, crimes against persons were 41 percent of all hate crimes; in 2022 they rose to 52 percent. In that year, nearly half of all hate crime reports carried an assault charge compared to 39 percent in 2018.
- 2023 data for areas outside of New York City detailing types of hate crime offenses has not yet been published by DCJS. Available data for New York City shows 58 percent of all New York City hate crime incidents in 2023 were committed against a person; of these, 32 percent were egregious enough to be felonies, including 72 felony assaults, 47 percent of which were committed on an anti-Jewish or anti-gay male bias. Incidents against Jewish New Yorkers accounted for 65 percent of all felony hate crime incidents (people and property) in New York City in 2023.
- The most common offense in New York City in 2023 was aggravated harassment in the first degree. There were 145 incidents of this type in New York City, and all but 14 of them were committed with an anti-Jewish bias. The two other most common offenses were misdemeanor assault crimes against persons, which were predominantly motivated by anti-gay male, anti-Jewish, anti-Asian, and anti-Black biases.
DiNapoli’s report noted several initiatives that have been undertaken at the state and federal level to address the increase in hate crimes, and identified key policy areas, including education, mental health services, and online safety, where action could be taken to help prevent hate crimes.
