Hate Crime Legislation: Classic or dud?

You can't change peoples attitudes too easily with legislation.

How come no legislators want to penalize rape and sexual assault as higher crimes even though they are borne out of hate? Half the time you can't even get people who do that jail time. Most rape victims are women - are hate law legislators sexist?

Person A kills me because he caught me in bed with his girlfriend. Person B kills my brother because my brother is black.

Which is those two individuals strikes you as more dangerous to society at large? Person A would appear to be dangerous primarily to those who have crossed or offended him in some way; person B, on the other hand, has essentially made an implied threat to murder anyone of a certain race. As such, it seems sensible that person B would receive the greater punshment -- in much the same way that premeditated murder carries a tougher sentence than a heat-of-the- moment killing. In that sense, I'd say that it has very little to do with political correctness or ethnicity or sexuality at all -- only that it displays a completely different, and much more significant, threat to society.

So ... note to Ally -- this same logic applies to white people, too. For example, the premeditated killing of a business competitor for your own personal gain is going to put you away for longer than getting into a fight in a bar and accidentally beating your opponent to death. And quite sensibly: the former shows a near-psychopathic, very dangerous disregard for human life, whereas the latter, even if not completely "accidental," is still something that a relatively non- dangerous person could wind up doing in extreme circumstances.

Oh jesus, I really don't want to get into this discussion (this is a bad subject to bring up on a frivolous message board, isn't it?), but two things:

1) I'm not white. Light skinned != white. So, quite frankly, I don't care, and actually just used the example of myself and some random black guy as the most obvious example that I could come to (obvious examples = things that involve me, generally). Does it apply to Hispanics? How about Indians? Cos, quite frankly, the only cases of crime I've ever heard this being even attempted at being tried on is either gays (never lesbians - can someone point me to a case like that?) or blacks, which strikes me as a very unfair way of going about it.

2) You're right, if we're going to enforce hate crimes, then it should apply to white people. I.e. if it was a hate crime to beat the shit out of Rodney King, then it's a hate crime to pull Reginald Denny out of his truck and smash him with a brick. But no one ever screams that out. Like I said, hate crime legislation seems very unfairly levelled around - you can take very similar situations and switch the person to Chinese or Caucasian or Mexican or whatever and whether or not someone thinks it's a hate crime changes with each instance.

What is so wrong with just ENFORCING crime laws that are already on the book? If you kill someone, you kill someone. Killing someone in a bar or killing someone in bed with your wife strikes me as just as dangerous (if not more in some instances) as someone who premeditates a very specific murder, in my mind at least - one is an instance of someone completely snapping and going violent, who's to say similar situations won't invoke the same response? The second is an instance of someone with a very specific reasoning against a very specific person who probably won't repeat it. So, hey, under that explanation, then clearly the person who goes temporarily insane is the worst one.

And I think that's my point, and other people's points, about thought legislation. WHOSE thoughts are we deciding are the correct ones? And how do we decide that a crime is a hate crime? Is ANY crime against a minority a hate crime? Is a crime against a non-minority (ie male and white) a hate crime if it is done simply because of those two facts?

And, uh, as a side note, Ethan, who the fuck cares if assault is less than murder? Carjacking is less than murder too but no one ignores that.

I don't support hate crime legislation because I don't think it's any worse to murder/assault a woman than a man, a black over a white, a gay over a straight.

This is a willful distortion of the point of such laws. The implication isn't that it's somehow worse to kill me than to kill a non-minority; the implication is that a person who will kill based solely on ethnicity or sexual orientation is, in a multicultural society, a threat far more dire than a person who kills for personal/emotional reasons. If a person kills, as I said, in the heat of an argument, there's a very good chance that person could be released into society without killing again. But once you've killed a person based solely on his being, say, black, there's no reason to believe you won't go out and kill every black person you see.

And by the way, your complaints about the application of this are perfectly valid -- except that they're all arguments in favor of more rigorous applications of hate crime laws.

Also, I think we should keep away from thinking that simply killing a minority consitutes a "hate crime." Such laws have, thus far, usually only been invoked in extreme cases -- for example, that of the man, a few years ago, who drove through the north suburbs of Chicago specifically shooting blacks and Jews, about as clear of a hate crime as anyone can dream up.

Hate crimes don't always involve murder and the law can be helpful in some cases I think. e.g. desecration of a mosque, synagouge, etc. If someone throws some neo-nazi graffitti up on synagouge or KKK stuff on an all black church the only crime they're guilty of w/out hate crime laws is defacing public property. They get a slap on the wrist. Throw in a federal hate crime charge and you're talking possible jail time. Maybe that person would firebomb the church/synagouge next time and the law is preventing this.

Sterling -- law can never remove the issues of motive and intent. If it tried, then I could have you arrested for stepping on my toe (the difference between "assault" and "accident" being, well, intent), or I could follow you around all day saying I was going to kill you, and smile when the courts refused to grant you a restraining order ("I was kidding," I would say. "Don't try to get inside my head and assign motives.").

I do think it's possible to establish coherent interpretations of "hate crimes," though -- certainly there will always be ridiculous, politically bent misinterpretations in the lower courts, but I don't think the overall concept, in limited form, is so complex as to defy objective interpretation.

I don't like the idea of hate crime legislation because I think laws and punishments should be as unambiguous as possible. I do not trust the legal system enough to increase its complexity by adding clauses about motives.

People should be punished for the crimes they have committed, not the ones they *may* commit. Putting them in jail for longer times on the basis of the nature of their hatred making them more of a threat (i.e., against a group instead of a person) is equal to punishing them for something they have not done yet.

This is at the heart of this sort of legislation, I think -- the idea that a swastika sprayed on a synagogue can be interpreted as a very specific threat against Jews, or that the racially-motivated lynching of one black man can be interpreted as a specific threat against all other blacks. It would be as if I killed your mother and then said, "I'm going to kill your whole family" -- that constitutes a much broader and more dangerous threat than if I'd just killed your mother for personal reasons.

under the serious crimes category then I agree with Ally's first point in that the motive of the murder only determines wether the crime was murder or manslaughter and should be dealt with accordingly. Racial motivations must sure be brought out in the court and could make the difference between murder and manslaughter and should be brought in a factor in sentancing. But surely this is part of our justice system already. The same goes for rape and sexual assault, these are serious crimes no matter what the motive and should be dealt with as such. If someone is serialy raping people of a certain minority then lock him up and throw away the key as a serial rapist.

Coming to the smaller crime such as daubing racist grafitti, then you start to have a problem because vandalism laws carry fairly minor penlties. Here you can put in palce (as inplace in britain) and law against incitement of racial hatred, which is not a 'though police' law but a law against the act of encouraging others to hate based on racial differences. so your racist grafitti merchant is trapped based on this. Is this a hate crime law?

Interestingly the law does not cover hatred against Judaism, Islam etc., these being religious nto racial minorites and there has been big debate recently about wether to enact a similar law proscribing the enictement of religious hatred (the debate seems to have been characterised by comedians going,' if we can make fun of the church then who can we make fun of')

The problem is of course freedom of speech. What am I free to say or not to say, even if I am free to think what I will. Its is for society to judge what is beyond the pale. Its seems much better to let the legal litmus test be for smaller crimes to say, 'did this person attempt to incite hatred' than 'did this person hate'

so in short: big crimes already dealt with under the law, small crimes, incitement to hatred is the test not hate itself

The lynch mob is still the most vivid symbol of hate crimes in America, but lynchings are largely a thing of the past. There are still plenty of hate crimes today, but they take a different form. Indeed, the very racial direction of hate crimes has seen a fundamental reversal. According to an FBI report on violence during 1993, black people were four times more likely than white people to commit hate crimes. (Important footnote [literally and figuratively] here: this represents the per capita likelihood of perpetrating hate crimes, as opposed to the proportion of crimes.)

A rare perpetrator's memoir described one such recent crime in Virginia. The author, at the time a teenager, was hanging out on his neighborhood corner with his friends one afternoon when they saw "a white boy, who appeared to be about eighteen or nineteen years old...pedaling a bicycle casually through the neighborhood." One of the black fellows pointed him out to the others, called him a derogatory name, and suggested that he must be crazy to have come there. The response "was automatic". They ran after the white boy, knocked him down, and beat him unconscious while cars drove past. They kicked his head until blood gushed from his mouth, and they tried to damage his sex organs. The author said that when he realized how badly the victim was injured, he backed away, as did several others, but one of his comrades continued "like he'd gone berserk" and even topped off the episode by picking up the bicycle and smashing it down on the victim as hard as he could. The boy on the ground did not even flinch with the impact, apparently being out cold at that moment.

Let's not forget that the razor cuts both ways. So, too, must hate crimes legislation, if their implementation is to be just.

Phil- I think that this has been said, but usually hate crime legislation doesn't specify hate crimes against a specific race, like blacks; it specifies hate crimes based on race, so under most legislation hate crimes committed by blacks would fall under the umbrella.

Tangentially:

Most rape victims are women

Interestingly, some sources claim otherwise -- that is, that the massive number of prison rapes, and prison rape victims, ends up tilting the scales so that more men, in fact, are raped every year than women, and that male-on-male rapes outnumber every other kind.

Food for thought, anyway. I can't vouch one way or the other for the studies in question. Certainly it makes sense that, since a substantial number of men in prison are reportedly raped on a daily basis, the number of male-on-male rapes would be extremely high.

Well, not entirely. It's just a little funny, though, because it's not an issue I feel particularly strongly about -- my arguments above aren't intended to demonstrate that hate crimes are essential or significantly helpful, only that the reasoning behind them is sound. Maybe it's a weird indentity issue, but I've always almost taken it as granted that a crime of that sort was inherently more threatening and dangerous than more circumstantial person-on-person crime.

But yeah, if they weren't on the agenda, it's not as if I'd be pushing too aggressively for them. Although maybe not: if some people were painting swastikas on my door every morning and the best anyone could do was charge them of vandalism, I'd be more than a little frustrated. . .

Also, should conspiracy laws be abolished in cases where the crime didn't take place?

4. Killing in the prosecution of an unlawful or wanton act. 5. Killing in the prosecution of a lawful act, improperly performed, or performed without lawful authority.

is the case. I thing racial,sexual or religious motivation in homicide tips the scales in favour of murder over manslaughter, but this is a matter for the court to decide, or rather for society to decide through its representatives, the jury. I do not think we can or should police peoples thoughs. and I do think that murder is murder (and indeed homicide is homicide) and that the motivation does not mitigate the crime. (time for new thread murder and manslaughter)

Relates back to main topic: much of the talk of "policing thought" and the "unworkability" of hate crimes legislation revolves around the likelihood that some very shrieky easily-offended person could well see those 20 copies of the Southern Partisan and start making some ridiculous complaint about, like, Barnes and Noble having committed a hate crime by stocking it. But isn't it this way with any law, from the "my hot coffee burned me" suit on up? On some level, I think, we have to trust that there are clear, reasonable, and unambiguous ways of applying such standards, and we have to stick to them, even when they go against our personal interests. (Although I realize this is usually completely fucking impossible for Americans to do; the majority of this country is seriously averse to even developing rational, consistent rules and principles, leave alone applying them.)

And yes, you would get someone pointing at a shelf saying "You stocked Mein Kampf, this is a hate crime!" to make money, this is America you know.

It's just an unworkable thing. People should be punished for their deeds, not their thoughts. Who am I to say that someone shouldn't hate a woman or a Mexican or whatever? I obviously disagree with that train of thought but if they keep their thoughts where they belong, ie in their own head, then I can't really say anything about it - no matter how wrong I think it is. That's my opinion of the subject. No amount of legislation is going to stop someone from thinking what they want, and honestly I just don't see how special rules and treatment will help at all, other than causing more debate, more fire, more anger.

Murder is murder is murder is murder. Assault is assault is assault is assault. To me, hate crimes legislation is only a few steps removed from the train of thought that leads certain men to say things like "Well, that girl looks like a slut, so of course she got raped" and makes people feel worse for "good Christian girls" who get raped, as if anyone deserves to be assaulted regardless of religion or fashion, or if somehow doing it to a girl in a short skirt makes it more acceptable than doing it to a girl with a crucifix around her neck.

It doesn't really matter if the person you hurt is a good person or a bad person, if you do something bad to someone and it's not in self- defense and it was purposeful, then you should be punished the same as anyone else.

And to those making these arguments -- Ally in particular -- I'd ask: do you have a problem with the fact that having a gun or selling drugs next to a school carries a higher penalty than doing the exact same thing two blocks over? I mean, do you find this fact horrifying, in that it breaks the "a crime is a crime" principle that's being espoused here?

As soon as you try to start viewing individuals (as some are arguing here) as faceless units, with set, context-free penalties for committing crimes against other units, that's when all reason escapes from your system -- that's when an 18-year-old punching another 18-year-old in an argument suddenly becomes "equal" to a future serial killer punching a woman in an effort to abduct her. "A punch is a punch," he'd argue. "So what if I was thinking about torturing and killing her? You can only punish me for my deeds." A hyperbolic example, maybe -- but a perfectly valid example of intent and context making a difference in our appraisal of a crime, the same way the intent and context of the swastika-on-the- synagogue makes it much more than just vandalism.

But to be specific: "hate crime legislation" does not mean that calling someone an offensive name or simply killing a minority will somehow get you the death penalty. Such laws are designed to target premeditated violence or harrassment that's specifically aimed to intimidate an entire racial group.

Spray painting a swastika on a Jewish person's front door would constitute a "hate crime." Spray painting a swastika, or "Eat the Rick," or anything else in a more open, semi-public place would not. The only way "Eat the Rich" could constitute a hate crime would be if it were painted on the walls of a wealthy person's home -- and it would still have to be demonstrated that it was reasonable to consider "Eat the Rich" a specific, intimidating threat toward the actual consumption of the wealthy.

You're generally right about the application of such things -- I'm not saying I trust John Ashcroft or small-town DAs to make such decisions all that consistently -- but two things: (a) like I said above, my goal here is to defend the principle more than the application, and (b) codifying such things would at least make the slanted decisions of folks like Ashcroft more visible, more in violation of the spirit of the law, and therefore more easily challenged.

Besides, spray-painting "Eat the Rich" on things is ... dumb. I mean, back in the 50s, the rich were so fatty and unhealthy ... and then they went straight to being these stringy, meatless health nuts. A nice middle-class office worker, medium-rare with Worcestershire marinade ... that's what it's all about.

But the main reason I've been arguing here is that I don't like the "a crime is a crime" rhetoric, which, if applied consistently, is like saying that a person who punches a big guy in an argument is somehow just as bad as a big guy who punches an old lady for no apparent reason.

But that's not what hate crime legislation is about -- at least not as depicted in Nitsuh's argument, which is by far the most plausible argument for HCL I've ever seen. The function of HCL isn't defensive, it's punitive, so that racially motivated crimes are given stiffer sentences for the reasons that Nitsuh detailed above. So talking about "white people being seen as an oppressed group" is a red herring -- unless I'm misreading something, a group of black men who beat a white man half to death (as in the story I quoted above) would be every bit as eligible for hate crime classification as would a group of whites doing the same to a black man, if the acts in question are deemed to be "premeditated violence or harassment that's specifically aimed to intimidate an entire racial group" as Nitsuh wrote.

To put it differently, the idea behind HCL would be that we have collectively decided to codify the notion that racially motivated crimes (and crimes motivated by religious hatred, etc.) are particularly heinous and destructive to the common good, and deserve additional punishment, and additional measures to keep the perpetrators isolated from society. In that light, it really doesn't matter whether the victim is black, white, Christian, Moslem, or whatever -- the point is the motivation of the criminal, and there is no prerequisite that the victim be a member of a minority.

I'm not saying I'm a supporter of HCL, but if Nitsuh's arguments are representative of the reality of the intent behind the actual laws, then it's a viewpoint worth taking seriously. On the other hand, if HCL were indeed about "oppressed groups who need the extra defense", then I would be categorically opposed to it.

Not to my knowledge. I personally first became aware of the extent of the prison rape problem in about 1995, when I took a course in college in which it was briefly discussed, so most of the research I've looked at dates back a ways. I know that Stop Prisoner Rape and similar orgs. have been working at raising public awareness for a while, but I doubt they're responsible for the critical mass you perceive.

Now I'm curious! Has there been a big new study, I wonder? Certainly the "War on Drugs", and the resulting incarceration of tens of thousands of non-violent offenders on possession charges, is probably making the issue more and more pressing as it continues -- inasmuch as it's helped to crowd American prisons with a fair number of young adult males, ill-equipped to deal with prison life, who probably make attractive targets for prison rapists...

I know its not the right thread but its still a bit shocking in its stupidity.

I used to get sickened by the reactions of some people when they discovered I was an immigration lawyer. Inexplicably there seems to be a general concensus that your average asylum seeker is on the make. This is incomprehensible to someone like me.

I've worked in many other areas of law before I settled on this one, and I can say without reservation that these are the clients that have impressed me the most by their honesty, bravery and intergrity.

I think my country is enriched by their presence and we can all learn from their example. These people have lost everything by fighting oppression and it irks me more than I can say to see them discriminated against.

Because, you know, he was right.

“Now don't get me wrong- crime against anyone of any race is wrong. But here's the problem- the only person who really knows if a crime qualifies as a 'hatecrime' is the person who commits it, and more often than not the motives are never 'black and white'. For example, is a fight between a white gang and an ethnic gang a hatecrime? Or is it mainly because the gangs are simply rival gangs? More importantly, does it matter? If a white man is mugged by a black man for his mobile phone, how does anyone know that it was not a 'hatecrime'? If the black man wants to mug someone for their mobile, and chooses to choose a white man as his victim rather than one of his own 'brothers', is that a hatecrime? Anyone who is expected to pass judgement on whether such crimes are racially motivated will always be in the dark, since unless you are a mind reader, it is impossible to look inside someone's head for a little label that says 'this is a racist brain'. This is not a trivial point, because racially motivated crimes receive much harsher punishment than 'ordinary crimes'- part of the sentence is a punishment for the crime, the other part is punishment for being a 'racist', a crime considered by many in the liberal establishment to be worse than 'real' crime”

These are not my words or opinion, just quoting from an article, my objectivity on this one is slightly blurred.

The points raised above didn't really answer the question I wanted to ask which was: is there a need for the additional classification of a "hate crime"?

Nitsuh defends the legislation saying that it keeps potentially more dangerous 'hate crime' offenders in prison and away from society. But if someone has committed assault or murder, doesn't the judge already weigh up their motives and the potential danger that they pose to society when deciding on the length of their sentence?

Besides, the body of law is not some sort of tightly-coded Java applet: it's a great messy thing that's constantly being reinterpreted and recodified and reclaimed. So even if we assume that every beneficial aspect of hate crime legislation is already present in laws concerning intimidation, harrassment, and distinctions between various sorts of assault and murder, what would the problem be with collecting and clearly restating them under one unifying rubric?

Surely that's an oxymoron? HAR HAR HAR

Sponsored by Republican Senator Gary George (Newberg), the bill calls for an additional five years in prison for an offender whose crime is motivated by 'a hatred of people who subscribe to a set of political beliefs that support capitalism and he needs of people with respect to their balance with nature.'

If i commit an illegal act with proven intent, then lock me up. But don't lock me up for an additional period of time because of what I believe.

A country that prizes freedom of speach should not punish people for holding certain views, no matter how misplaced of plain wrong these views may be.

freedom of speech

pAH!

http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2016/09/nopd_hate_crime_blue_lives_mat.html

According to arrest documents, Delatoba was drunk and banging on a window at the Royal Sonesta Hotel, 300 Bourbon St. around 5:15 a.m. Monday, when a witness who heard the banging told him to stop. Delatoba's warrant says he yelled at the witness, "calling him a n-----."

That witness, a security guard who works at a nearby building's mezzanine, along with a security supervisor for the Royal Sonesta, flagged down two Louisiana State Troopers who then escorted Delatoba to NOPD's 8th District station, the warrant states. Once at the station, the warrant states, Delatoba began to verbally "attack members of the New Orleans Police Dept." The warrant states Delatoba called one female officer a "dumb a-- c---" and another officer a "dumb a-- n-----."

The warrant states Sgt. S. Jackson instructed NOPD Officer Williams Knowles to charge Delatoba with a hate crime in addition to damaging property and disturbing the peace. "The hate crime charge stems from Delatoba's attack on individuals based on their race, sex, and occupation," the warrant states.

A police officer and the security guard who worked at a nearby building are listed as victims in the case, along with the Royal Sonesta and the state of Louisiana

this is...not a hate crime

yeah they're abhorrent statements but don't seem to be within the spirit of the laws at all. could book for drunk+disorderly conduct plus the aforementioned damages but I don't get this application

LA recently updated their hate crime laws to include law enforcement occupation as a protected class, which is what this is really about

i feel like the reactionary potential embedded w/in the concept of hate-crime laws was there all along and will inevitably be realized more and more.

assault, murder, etc. are already serious crimes with stiff penalties (indeed, the US really loves to incarcerate people for long periods of time). i've never been clear on how tacking on additional penalties because the prosecutor was able to demonstrate that "hate" of a particular protected class of persons was the chief motive is supposed to help society.