Tennessee Hate Crimes Report

A hat tip to Jerry Jones for letting me know that the TBI's Hate Crimes in Tennessee 2007 report has come out.

The report tracks bias-motivated crimes on a variety of levels, one of which is sexual bias. It does not explicitly cover gender identity. Here are some of the findings.

*In 2007, we saw a slight decrease in hate crimes based on sexual orientation. The number went from 60 in 2006 to 56 in 2007. That number is not much comfort considering the 2006 number (60) is almost triple the 2005 number (21).

*Even the number is down overall, the number of hate crimes against lesbians went up from 11 in 2006 to 13 in 2007.

*The number of hate crimes against bisexuals also increased from 2 in 2006 to 4 in 2007.

*An extraordinarily high number of victims of sexual bias crimes are African American. 23 out of the 56 victims in 2007 were Black.

*Hate crime victims in Tennessee are young. 32 of the 56 victims were 34 or younger. 23 of them were 24 or younger. 9 of them were under the age of 18.

*25 of the cases were reported in Memphis.

More analysis of the numbers to come...