Hate crime incidents rise

WASHINGTON, Nov. 19 (UPI) -- U.S. hate-crime incidents rose nearly 8 percent last year, the FBI reported on Monday.

In 2006, the Federal Bureau of Investigation received reports of 7,722 criminal incidents as a result of bias against a race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin, or physical or mental disability.

Since the FBI began collecting hate-crime data in 1991, the most frequent motivation has been racial bias, which last year accounted for 51.8 percent of incidents.

Religious bias was blamed for 18.9 percent of the incidents in 2006, sexual orientation bias for 15.5 percent, and ethnic or national origin for 12.7 percent.

In Louisiana, where jail sentences given to six black youths for beating up a white student after a noose was hung outside their school in the town of Jena sparked recent protests, 22 hate crimes were reported.

Those incidents, however, were not reflected in the report because neither Jena nor LaSalle Parish were among the agencies reporting.

Only 12,600 of the nation's more than 17,000 local, county, state and federal police agencies participated in the FBI's hate-crime reporting program in 2006.