The FBI issued its 2004 hate crimes report, which noted in part that "the hate crime program tallied 7,649 bias-motivated incidents involving 9,035 offenses directed at 9,528 victims. The offenses were committed by 7,145 known offenders."

The Anti-Defamation League's analysis of the report concludes that the FBI statistics "document[] a slight decrease in overall crime reports in 2004, but an increase in the number of reported hate crimes." Further, "the number of reported religion-based crimes increased slightly from 2003...."