Reported bias incidents in New Jersey rose last year by 22%, continuing a trend that has sharply increased since 2016, according to preliminary data released by the attorney general’s office on Thursday.
Anti-Black and anti-Jewish bias continued to be the most common race- and religion-based motivations for reported bias incidents in 2023, the preliminary data shows. Anti-Black bias was cited as a motivation for 1,101 reported bias incidents in 2023, representing 34% of all reported bias motivations for that year. Anti-Jewish bias was cited as a motivation for 708 reported bias incidents in 2023, representing 22% of all reported motivations in 2023.
Anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents also rose, including an uptick after Hamas’ attack in October and the start of Israel’s bombardment of Gaza. Anti-Muslim incidents nearly doubled overall from 61 in 2022 to 107 in 2023, and anti-Arab incidents rose from 46 to 78 in the same time, according to a summary of the data from the attorney general’s office.
“What the report shows is, frankly, an alarming rise in bias activity across the board,” Attorney General Matthew Platkin said. “It does not reflect 100% of the bias conduct in our state. And that’s in part because we still have work to do with a lot of communities to encourage reporting because we do take every report seriously.”
New Jersey changed the way it collects data in 2019, which has also contributed to an increase in the number of reported incidents in recent years. Starting that year, it began collecting data on more protected classes of people. It also expanded the definition of “bias incident” to encompass any suspected or confirmed violation of the state’s bias intimidation statute.
With the new categories factored in, state officials counted more bias incidents in 2022 than any time in three decades since it began logging them, and 2023’s preliminary figures exceed that amount.
The number of bias incidents has also doubled over the last…
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