WASHINGTON — 

The number of U.S. police agencies using the new crime reporting system to report hate crimes has dropped sharply as the bureau shifted to it, the FBI said Monday (Dec. 12), but those using the new system continue to report overall hate increase in crime.


About 4,000 of the more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies across the country reported no hate crimes last year, the FBI said in its closely watched annual hate crime report, dividing police departments' participation in the FBI's data collection by That fell to nearly 65 percent from 93 percent the year before.


The FBI's annual report is widely used as a broad measure of hate crimes in the United States. The sharp drop in the number of police agencies reporting data to the agency makes it difficult to tell whether hate crimes were up or down last year, even though other data point to an overall upward trend.


Asked whether the report rendered any year-over-year comparisons meaningless, an FBI official said: "Unless we see increased law enforcement involvement and recognize that this is a transition year, That would be the right perception."


A new FBI report reveals 7,262 hate crime incidents in the US in 2021. In comparison, there were 8,263 such incidents in 2020.


But comparing the two numbers is imprecise because they are based on different data clusters.


"When we see decades-old records being broken in major cities and many states, in a situation where one-third of law enforcement agencies don't engage in FBI reporting at all, it means we simply don't have an accurate national picture. The official overview of what actually happened" said Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.


Any increase in the record of hate crimes, Levine said, is "scrubbed out of lack of engagement."


While the number of police agencies participating in its new system has declined, participating law enforcement agencies continue to report an overall increase in hate crimes, the FBI said.


"Despite lower hate crime statistics reported to us in 2021, hate crime statistics overall have not decreased; this means an increase in hate crimes reported to our reporting agencies," an FBI official said in a statement. said in a telephone briefing ahead of the report's release.


The FBI's new crime reporting system, called the National Incident-Based Reporting System, provides finer detail and context about crimes, which the bureau says will allow police agencies to Fight crime better.


But the downside is that police agency that are not equipped to make system transitions have lower engagement rates. FBI and Justice Department officials said they were working to increase participation through training and other initiatives.


The low level of hate crime reporting echoes the low participation rates in an FBI report on overall crime released in October.


In that report, the FBI said only 63 percent of law enforcement agencies reported crime data for 2021; the lowest level of participation in more than four decades.


The FBI defines a hate crime as a criminal offense "motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias regarding race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, sex, or gender identity."


Hate crimes have been on the rise in recent years.


Last year, the FBI reported that hate crimes rose to the highest level since 2001. The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, fueled a surge in attacks against Muslims and others perceived as Muslim