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California DOJ: reported hate incidents rose in 2024; victims and prosecutions also increased
Summary
The California Department of Justice told a legislative select committee that reported hate crime events and reported victims increased in 2024, with anti-Black incidents remaining the largest single category. DOJ officials urged better data collection, training for law enforcement and community outreach.
My name is Damon Brown, a special assistant attorney general and legal and policy adviser on civil rights and police practices at the California Department of Justice, told the California State Assembly Select Committee on Hate, Racism, and Xenophobia that the DOJ released its 2024 Hate Crime in California report and is pushing departments and community partners to strengthen prevention, reporting and prosecution.
The report, Brown said, found increases in both reported hate crime events and reported victims in 2024. Reported hate crime events rose 2.7% from 1,970 in 2023 to 2,023 in 2024; hate crime offenses rose 8.9% from 2,359 to 2,568; and the number of reported hate crime victims rose 8.2% from 2,303 to 2,491. Brown said anti-Black bias events remained the single largest category of reported incidents, reporting 578 incidents in 2024, while anti-Hispanic/Latino incidents numbered 255. He also said anti-Jewish incidents rose from 289 in 2023 to 310 in 2024, and anti-Asian incidents fell slightly.
Brown summarized enforcement outcomes the DOJ is tracking: referrals for prosecution increased from 679 in 2023 to 818 in 2024; of those 818 referred events, 506 were filed by district or city attorneys and 327 of those filings were charged as hate crimes. He stressed the limits of reported data and said the DOJ believes the actual number of hate incidents is much higher because hate is frequently underreported.
Committee members asked for more granular counts and clarifications. Brown explained the difference between hate crime events and hate crime offenses — an event can include multiple offenses and victims — and provided the DOJ breakdown for 2024: 1,679 violent hate-crime offenses (ranging from aggravated assault to homicide), 796 property offenses (burglary, arson, motor-vehicle theft and similar), and 93 multiple-bias incidents. He also described DOJ resources released this year: updated law-enforcement bulletins, multilingual victim fact sheets, a rapid-response protocol for deploying DOJ resources, guidance to prosecutors and the department’s public data portal where historical data since 1995 are available.
Brown closed by reaffirming the DOJ’s commitment to partnering with law enforcement and community organizations on training, outreach and prosecution and said the department stands ready to answer follow-up requests from the committee.
The committee’s follow-up actions include requests for the full 2024 report and related DOJ guidance so members can review recommended legislative responses and resource needs.
