New York – Today, the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) and fifteen of its members across the country released their annual report on violence against lesbians, gay men, bisexual people and transgender individuals. The 70-page report examines data compiled from almost 1,500 hate-related incidents in twelve cities, states and regions across the country including: the Chicago area, Columbus, Ohio, Colorado, Houston, Texas, Kansas City, Missouri, Massachusetts, Michigan, Minnesota, the New York City area, Pennsylvania, the San Francisco Bay area, and Vermont. Additional information was included from Long Island, New York, Milwaukee, Wisconsin and Tucson, Arizona.
NCAVP’s report is the most complete examination of hate violence against LGBT people. Each year, the FBI publishes its own report on hate crimes, which includes anti-LGBT incidents, but it consistently contains information on far fewer cases than the NCAVP publication because it relies solely on law enforcement reports of such crimes rather than victim service organization data, a deficiency recently cited in a publication released by the U.S. Department of Justice
in January 2006.
Overall, NCAVP’s report noted a 3% decrease in reported incidents of anti-LGBT violence. Such incidents fell from 1,440 in 2005 to 1,393 in 2006. Despite the small and statistically insignificant decline in incident reports, a number of regions - primarily in the nation's midsection - showed increases in anti-LGBT violence. Those regions included: Chicago (+76%), Kansas City (+17%) and Michigan (+54%). While Columbus, Ohio did not report an increase in incidents, it registered a mere 1% decrease in reports. The one Midwestern location to report a significant decline in incidents was Minnesota where reported incidents fell 25%. Another leader in increased anti-LGBT violence this year was Colorado, which saw reports increase 105%. Factors contributing to the dramatic rise there included highly charged, simultaneous and opposing defense of marriage and domestic partnership campaigns. Additionally, an increase in staff capacity at CAVP allowed for better tracking of incidents throughout the reporting period.
Despite the decline in incidents overall for the year, there was a 22% increase in anti-LGBT homicides reported attributable to increases in Colorado, Michigan, New York, and San Francisco.
Positively, this year's report shows that the number of actual victims and offenders declined at a much greater rate than incidents. Victims impacted by anti-LGBT violence fell by 9%, while the number of offenders fell 13%.
"What we saw in 2006 was a slowing of the substantial decline our report showed in 2005," said Clarence Patton, NCAVP's Acting Executive Director. "After the historic spikes in reports in 2003 and 2004 we had hoped that reports of incidents could only go down, which they did, by 13% in regions participating in our 2005 report, but from the data in this year's report there is an indication that we may be reaching a plateau in the rate of anti-LGBT violence; and in part, this plateau may be some reflection of the ever growing strength of NCAVP and its member organizations and their efforts to provide education and prevention strategies to such key groups as community members, law enforcement, and service providers," said Patton.
According to NCAVP, the last two editions of its report show that in relatively quiet years for the LGBT community such as 2005 and 2006, reports of anti-LGBT violence can decline - at times substantially. However, in this instance that decline comes after dramatic increases in anti-LGBT hate incidents noted by the Coalition in 2003 and 2004 as the nation grappled with significant victories and defeats for LGBT people such as the U.S. Supreme Court's landmark decision in Lawrence v. Texas, the granting of same-sex marriage rights in Massachusetts, anti-same-sex marriage ballot initiatives in numerous states, the Presidential and Congressional threat of a federal marriage amendment, and the demonization of the LGBT community and families during the 2004 election cycle. For instance, after rising only 3% in the first six months of 2003, reports of anti-LGBT violence to NCAVP member organizations jumped 26% after the Lawrence decision and the Massachusetts marriage debate. Reports rose another 4% in NCAVP's report on anti-LGBT violence in 2004.
"Despite the overall decrease in reported incidents, we are truly concerned about the increases in reports last year seen through much of the Midwest; as we know many of those states were battlegrounds in the anti-same-sex marriage efforts over the past several years, and those ongoing increases in violence against LGBT people are likely the ongoing impacts of those efforts and the environment they help create," added Patton.
"We know that legislation addressing hate crimes can open the door to more attention to the issue at local, state and federal levels. It can also allow for more comprehensive responses and strategies to mitigate such violence among law enforcement, service providers and community leaders. Therefore the passage last week of the Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act (LLEHCPA) in the House of Representatives is an important victory in the move toward addressing hate crimes - particularly those impacting lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people - from a national perspective," concluded Patton.
The data in the report is submitted to NCAVP for analysis and derived from a common intake tool NCAVP’s members utilize when directly serving victims of violence at their agencies, which are primarily, local LGBT victim service organizations.
PDF versions of the 2006 Report
, its Executive Summary, Recommendations, data sets in PDF and Excel, as well as previous editions of NCAVP’s reports on hate-motivated and domestic violence are available here .
For additional or regional contact information, call 212-714-1184.
The National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs (NCAVP) addresses the pervasive problem of violence committed against and within the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender (LGBT) and HIV-positive communities. NCAVP is a coalition of programs that document and advocate for victims of anti-LGBT and anti-HIV/AIDS violence/harassment, domestic violence, sexual assault, police misconduct and other forms of victimization. NCAVP is dedicated to creating a national response to the violence plaguing these communities. Further, NCAVP supports existing anti-violence organizations and emerging local programs in their efforts to document and prevent such violence.
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Selected Illustrations from the 2006 Report on Anti-LGBT Hate Violence:
