I was watching South Park last night (it was the hate crime episode) and started thinking. Why on earth would a racist/sexist/heterosexist motive affect the degree of punishment. It seems to me that those little fourth-graders were correct in stating that all violent crimes are hate crimes. If I kill someone, is it not because I hate him? Why separate people by making it a different type of crime for whites to kill blacks of heteros to kill homos? Please forgive me if my understanding of hate crime laws is incorrect, but it seems to me that this is generally the way they work.
I think the motive can make a difference in smaller scale crimes. For instance, it could be argued that there is a qualitative difference between spray painting graffitti on a synagogue or spray painting swastikas on a synagogue. The swastikas create an element of terrorism that aggravates the crime.
Do a search for Hate Crime, this comes up every two weeks or so.
Consider that by targetting a individual because, say, they’re black you are intimidating other blacks in the area. Because of this, the affect of your crime goes beyond the individual being attacked.
Consider lynching of blacks in the deep south during the 50’s. Did the crime just intend to affect the individual or to cow the entire community?
Kill everybody. Only then will we have world peace.
Part of it is that it has an impact on others in that group. However, the reason that the murder or assault of “fatties” or “no-good bastards” is not covered by hate crime legislation is that its much less of an issue. Overall, hate crimes against homosexuals and minorities have been greater in number and severity than crimes against other persons that stand out. That is why they are covered by hate crime laws while other groups are not. Whatever you may think of the current PC environment, I’m certain that were, say, a black man to attack a white man while uttering racial slurs pertaining to other man’s race, he would be put on trial for a hate crime and the result would be no different than if the situation were reversed.
Punishment is a deterrent. If people do not see the inherent evil in what they are doing, then levying an especially harsh penalty will at least make them think a touch harder about pistolwhipping that gay man in the head until his skull is reduced to mush.
But shouldn’t they be thinking really hard about pistolwhipping any man until his skull is mush?
Why should they be a little afraid of the punishment for doing that to a straight man, but very afraid if it’s a gay man?
Is it less bad if the victim is straight?
Part of the problem with “hate crime” is the semantic confusion of the word “hate” in the phrase; it allows people to deliberately confuse the issue, as the OP does by saying that all violent crimes are hate crimes.
“Hate crimes” doesn’t mean that hatred is the motive; it means that the crime is directed at some cultural group in which the victim participates. A better description of hate crimes is something like “bigot crimes”. The specific rationale for sentence multipliers in these cases is that, because bigotry is a crucial part of the motive, there are consequences to the crime that extend beyond the damage to the victim: An attack on the victim is an attack on the community as well. Greater consequences = greater punishment.
Yes, violent crimes are generally hateful. That says nothing about the reasoning behind the extra criminalization of “bigot crimes”.
As has been said, I think that ‘hate crime’ is a misnomer, and tends to fuel the anti-pc movement. Think of it more as ‘domestic terrorism’ and it makes more sense. As I understand it, it’s not so much a separate charge, but is considered an aggravating circumstance in sentencing. You’re not simply attacking one person, you are marking a specific segment of the community as vulnerable to violent intimidation, usually in an effort to either a)stop a behavior or b)make them go away or c)just eliminate them altogether. This also tends to be a signal that other offenses are likely (i.e. targeting another member of the same group).
I think the point the OP (and SP) is trying to make though is that ALL violent crimes affect more than just the victim.
If I go into a neighborhood and pick a random person in that neighborhood and beat them to death (or whatever) then EVERYONE in that neighboorhood will likely not feel safe (or feel less safe). The same could be said for a robbery by gunpoint at a liquor store, it makes all the other liquor store owner/operators feel less safe.
Though I am sure that some horrible incident against a homosexual in Alabama will make all homosexuals feel less comfortable with their society in general, I doubt the ones in San Fran (horrible stereotype thrown in for my own amusement) go out at night looking over their shoulder because of it. However, there are probably a lot of straight people in the immediate area who fealt just as unsafe because of the attack. I know I would if someone in my area got beaten to death, and bigotry wouldn’t make that any bettor or worse.
It’s my opinion that ALL violent crimes should be as severely punished as ‘hate crimes’ are, because ALL violent crimes negatively affect the community in general, and society as a whole.
The point I’m trying to make is that Hate Crime legislation separates us into categories and fosters the idea that minorities are different and should be treated differently. I wholeheartedly agree that Racialy motivated crimes affect more people than just the victim, but I also agree with stick monkey that all crimes affect the community, regardless of race or sexual orientation. I am still inclined to feel that Hate Crime laws are just as divisive as the crimes themselves.
Yes, all violent crimes have consequences that reach beyond the victim and affect the community around. The difference between your generic violent crime and a hate crime is that there’s intent to target the community in the hate crime, unlike robbing a liquor store or mugging the next person walking down the street. If I beat a person to death because he owes me money, it’s not a hate crime; if I beat him to death because he’s gay/black/white/straight, then it’s a hate crime. The consequent fear created in the community is more distinct in a hate crime than it is in a crime that unintentionally harms the community. If you need an example to appreciate this, imagine what it was like to be black in Mississippi in the days of lynching, or to be gay in Laramie after Matthew Shepherd’s death.
Did you catch that, Shiva? Hate crimes apply equally to minority criminals who target majority victims because they’re attacking the majority. In other words, a gay man who beats me to death because I’m straight, or a black man who beats me to death because I’m white, is just as guilty of a hate crime as I would be in the reverse case. There are no special protected groups created by hate crime legislation, and it in no way suggests that minorities should be treated differently. A Mexican or Asian superiority movement would be just as likely to run afoul of hate crime laws as a white superiority movement.
Hate crime laws are only divisive to those who want to act on their bigotry.
Has it? Has the Nation of Islam’s racial hatemongering been subject to much legal scrutiny by the advocates of “hate crime laws” these days? These laws are not applied equally to all citizens. They do set aside minorities into special categories.
Has the Nation of Islam committed hate crimes? Meaning, has the Nation of Islam committed violent crimes directed at a community, since hate crime legislation was passed?
Get it right: hate crime laws do not criminalize bigotry or hatred directed at a group. Hate crime laws are only a sentence enhancer on crimes that have already been committed.
Do you have a cite for a case where a member of the Nation of Islam should have received a hate-crime multiplier on his sentence, and didn’t?
Yes hansel, they are technically worded so that they are ‘culturally ambiguous’, where it shouldn’t matter whose doing the crime, only their appearant motivation for the crime.
However, let’s be completely honest. Where in america have you not seen a double standard with this kind of stuff in the past 10 years?
And don’t forget, hate crime laws don’t just affect actual violent crimes, but extend to assault (which can be implied crimes, like threat). Do you honestly think a minority threatening someone with racial slurs is going to get treated the same in court as someone who is perceived as picking on a minority?
This is a thought law. I find it ludicrous that motive should have any bearing on punishment.
I really don’t understand what the problem would be with punishing all violent crimes severly? And why do we have to seperate everyone into little groups? I thought the whole point of this country was that everyone is equal? Shouldn’t Intra-group crime be just as bad as Inter-group crimes? Aren’t both of them attrocities?
Dogface, the Nation of Islam is listed as a hate group on tolerance.org.
So your problem is not with hate crimes in principle, but with their implementation in our justice system? Well, so are our murder laws badly implemented: a black defendent is twice as likely to receive the death penalty in the U.S. as a white defendent, for the same crime. Since our murder laws aren’t working out in practice, should we just ditch them? Or should we fix the systemic problem in our courts that makes the implementation unequal?
Here, I think, is the nub of the matter.
In point of fact, motive and intent are commonly considered in court cases. They are almost always a factor in sentencing (for example, whether I embezzled from the company to feed my starving family, vs. whether I did so to support a gambling habit; for another example, killing someone in furtherance of another crime is generally punished more harshly than a murder of passion, the only difference being the motive or intent). So why shouldn’t another variety of intent affect sentencing?
And there’s the nub of my argument: this is not a thought crime, since it doesn’t criminalize thought. I can be a bigot. I can still hate gays, blacks, mexicans, women, cripples, whatever, and there’s no grounds there to put me in jail. It’s only if I commit a crime based on that hatred that my hatred becomes an aggravating factor for that crime. Even then, I’m not being punished for the hatred–I’m being punished for the crime I committed, and my crime is judged to be more heinous than usual because my motive was bigotry.
Let me put a question to you, stick monkey: do you consider it worse, morally, if I beat someone up because of their race, than if I do so because they owe me a lot of money that they haven’t paid me?
If you do consider it worse, then why shouldn’t the law reflect that difference in the moral judgement of my act?
:sigh: stick monkey, we impose a greater punishment on an arsonist where the motive was profit than where the motive is “I like pretty fires.” Is this a problem for you? Contrary your belief, motive has long been a basis in American law to enhance punishment. To adopt your phrasing, we’ve already got “thought laws.”
So, seeing that we have already established the precedent that motive can be a factor in determining punishment, can we move past this erroneous argument and discuss whether or not this particular motive is an appropriate factor to consider?
Sua
Just to be clear…
If you bash a guy’s skull in because he just hit your car then it doesn’t matter if he’s gay or not (or black or whatever). Your motivation for killing him wasn’t that he was gay but because he damaged your car. Whether the victim is straight or gay your punishment will be the same in this case.