SALDEF Investigates Decrease in Reported Anti-Sikh Incidents in Updated FBI Hate Crime Data

IMMEDIATE RELEASE: March 16, 2023
Contact: Jyot Singh | Research and Policy Manager | jyot.singh@saldef.org

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released an updated 2021 national hate crime report, documenting 185 incidents of anti-Sikh hate crimes. While the vast majority of targeted groups saw an increase that corrected for the underreporting in the first release, the Sikh community  had 30 fewer incidents reported in the updated statistics, down from 214.

“We are gravely concerned that, in a side-by-side comparison of the original and updated hate crime data which corrects for underreporting, every non-Christian religious group saw an increase in reported incidents–except Sikh Americans. We are reaching out to the Department of Justice and other agencies to understand why correcting for underreporting resulted in 30 incidents of anti-Sikh hate disappearing,” said Kiran Kaur Gill, Executive Director of the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF). “While 185 incidents is still extremely significant, we are working to understand why our community–which has historically high bias and hate incidents per capita year-over-year–has been the only one with such a significant reduction.” 

The original 2021 hate crime report released in December 2022 did not include data from at least 22% of law enforcement agencies across the country, including those in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, and Phoenix (all areas with significant Sikh populations). This new dataset intends to fill those gaps in data, and overall does show significantly higher numbers of incidents across the board.

“The updated data to correct for underreporting reflect a 13.6% decrease in the reported number of anti-Sikh hate crimes. We are alarmed by this discrepancy, and we look forward to  conversations to determine the exact cause of this and to prevent erasure of our community in future federal hate crimes data,” continued Gill.