Between 2013 and 2022 (the most recent year for which data is available), the FBI
recorded 21 fatal hate crimes committed against trans and gender non-conforming people, including bias-motivated deaths categorized as murder, manslaughter, or negligent manslaughter, far fewer than the 335 deaths recorded by HRC.
The discrepancy is due to the fact that ‘hate crime’ carries a legal definition, albeit one which differs between jurisdictions, and across state and federal regulations. In addition,
not all jurisdictions collect and/or report hate crimes data to the FBI, meaning that the FBI’s database is incomplete. For the purpose of our reporting, a case is only categorized as a hate crime if it has been officially categorized as such under an existing federal or state hate crime statute—meaning that a person has been charged, convicted, and/or sentenced. However, a case does not have to be categorized as a hate crime, to be included in our reporting.
This does not discount the many cases where bias, hate, and structural violence and stigma played a role in the killing of individuals, including indirectly through fostering the conditions in which the death occurred (e.g. if a person was killed while engaging in survival sex work, after being pushed out of the formal economy). Nor does it discount the fact that many cases may be motivated by anti-trans hate, regardless of if this rose to the level of meeting the legal definition for hate crime in their jurisdiction.