Tuesday, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation released two reports, detailing the volume and nature of crime identified as hate crime and crime occurring in the state's schools. The annual studies compile crime data submitted to TBI by the state's law enforcement agencies through the Tennessee Incident Based Reporting System (TIBRS).
Among the findings from 'Tennessee Hate Crime 2015':
- Overall, the number of victims of reported bias-motivated offenses increased 48.1%.
- Males (57.1%) were victimized at a higher rate than females (42.9%).
- In 2015, the number of Damage/Destruction/Vandalism offenses, indicated as being a hate crime, increased 4.9% from the previous year.
Among the findings from 'School Crime 2013-2015':
- Overall, the number of offenses occurring in schools decreased 15.6% from 9,961 offenses in 2013 to 8,408 in 2015.
- Simple Assault was the most frequently reported offense, at 36.4% of all reported offenses.
- Males were reported to be the offender of 63.6% of offenses.
- The month of April had the highest frequency of school crimes.
As always, the TBI strongly discourages the comparison of one jurisdiction's statistics to another. The factors impacting crime vary from community to community and rudimentary comparisons will most likely result in inaccurate and generalized conclusions of the relative safety of one community over another.
The full reports, along with similar studies dating back to 2001, are available online for review at http://tn.gov/tbi/article/recent-publications.
