AJ+ tweeted two graphics on 17 February 2015:
Unless my math is off, that is 1,031 religion based hate crimes in 2013.
We would all prefer that number to be 0 but it’s not.
The problem with those graphics is they give no sense of context for how those crimes compare to the incident of crime in general.
Assuming that hate crimes can be violent or property crimes, the total of those two categories of crime in the United States for 2013 were:
9,795,659 (1,163,146 violent crimes + 8,632,512 property crimes)
Or if you want to know the percentage of religious hate crimes against all violent and property crimes:
1031 / 9,792,659 = % of religious hate crime of all crime.
Or, let’s assume every religious hate crime was committed by different individuals, giving us a total of 1,031 offenders.
To put that in context, the estimated U.S. population was 316,497,531 in 2013, with 23.3% of the population being under 18 years of age. That leaves a population over 18 of 242,753,606.
If you want to know the percentage of religious hate crime offenders to the U.S. population over 18 years of age:
1031 / 242,753,606 = % of religious hate crime offenders to the U.S. population over 18.
Or the number of people in the U.S. who didn’t commit religious hate crimes in 2013: 242,753,606 – 1,036 = 242,752,575
Including context in those graphics would be extremely difficult because the context is so large that the acts in question would not show up on the graphics at all.
What should our response to religious hate crime be? At a minimum the offenders should be caught and punished and the local community should rally around the victims to assure them the aberrant offenders do not represent the local community and to help the victims and their community heal.
At the same time, we should recognize, as should religious communities, that religious hate crimes are aberrant behavior that represents views not shared by the general population or the government.
Take this as an illustration that: News without context isn’t news. It is noise.
Update: I omitted my source for U.S. population statistics: USA QuickFacts