Last week, the Massachusetts attorney general established a hate crime hotline in response to a flood of reports in the wake of last week's election. But recently released data points to a longer trend here in Massachusetts.
Last year, the number of hate crimes reported in Massachusetts rose for the second year in a row, according to state and federal statistics analyzed by WGBH News. This data shows that between 2014 and 2015, the number of crimes reportedly motivated by racial bias rose by twenty percent, while those tied to religious bias rose by 40 percent.
These figures come during what Massachusetts Attorney General Maura Healey describes as a disturbing volume of calls to a hate crime hotline her office established last week.
While the number of hate crimes reported in Massachusetts has declined from a peak of nearly 600 in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2011, terrorist attacks, statistics recently released by the FBI show that the numbers have begun to climb back up over the last two years.
In 2014, law enforcement agencies in Massachusetts reported 161 hate crimes listing race or ethnicity as a “bias motive” to the FBI — a roughly 20 percent rise from 2014, after three straight years in which the numbers had declined.
The same figures show a more than 40 percent increase in hate crimes motivated by religious bias — 81 last year, the highest number since at least 2010.
A Flood Of New Calls
Meanwhile, the attorney general's hate crime hotline has received roughly 300 calls so far, about 60 of which it deemed significant enough to warrant further investigation, Healey told WGBH News on Friday.
Healey cautioned against extrapolating too much from these by themselves. Higher counts of reported hate crimes can represent more citizens coming forward, more outreach by officials, or more vigorous reporting by law enforcement, she pointed out — not necessarily more crime.
Reports of hate crimes motivated by other biases — like sexual orientation, disability, or gender and gender identity — did not increase statewide over the period for which data is available.
