Every once in a while I’ll hear about some murderer or offender getting extra punishment under some sort of “hate crimes” legislation, and I’m reminded of how completely retarded it is that we’ve managed to legislate people’s thoughts and beliefs. Seriously, it’s the closest thing we have to “thought crime.”
Every violent crime is a hate crime - it’s happening because the offender has found a real to have anger for someone else to the point where they feel that they have to do that person harm or even kill them. Why is it somehow worse if that reason is because they’re a racist or homophobe, rather than a personal vendetta or just blind, unchecked rage at a traffic slight?
I guarantee that I have more hatred in my pinkie for those that I perceive as “rich” than an entire Klan rally does for blacks, or the entire Fred Phelps congregation has for gays. If a guy driving a BMW cuts me off in traffic and I end up murdering him, I can guarantee that it was more of a “hate crime” than any gay bashing due to my blind, unchecked prejudice and hatred for people that i perceive as being rich. Yet it would never be treated as a “hate crime.”
I dunno, if you beat your wife to death after thinking about it for a while, its first degree murder. If you do it in a fit of rage, its second degree, and a “lesser crime”.
In other words, even putting hate crimes aside, the motivation for committing murder is often a factor in how the crime is regarded by the law.
I’m sure people are murdered for reasons other then hate. If I stab you in a dark alley for your wallet, I wouldn’t necessarily say I “hate” you, I just want your money.
Killing someone because s/he cut you off in traffic is motive. Killing someone for no other reason than the perception of wealth is a crime motivated by preconceived ideas about a person. I still don’t buy it.
You may have a disdain for wealthy people but our society doesn’t. In fact, wealth is revered in our culture. On the other hand, discrimination based on religion, ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation is extremely real and pervasive in our culture. Racial discrimination was legally mandated in the South until the Civil Rights Act. I believe hate crimes should be recognized and punished.
Also, my understanding of hate crime legislation isn’t that it’s so punish “hate” (I think your reading too much into the name), it’s too punish murders that are committed with a particular motivation that we wish to discourage. The US (and most other countries as well, I imagine) have something of a history of people committing violence against members of particular groups in order to terrorize or subjugate that group as a whole. So we’ve given people that do so harsher sentences. Indeed “hate” doesn’t even enter into most definitions that I’ve seen of hate crimes, rather its the targeting of specific groups.
An analogy might be a person who blows up a store to damage a competitors business versus the same person who blows up the store as an act of terrorism. The second case would probably be treated as a greater crime, even though the actual act was the same.
It is a peculiar idea to punish somebody more for a crime if it was based on hate, but I have mixed feelings about it. If you beat a guy up over a pool shot, that’s bad. If you beat a guy up because he’s Chinese, that’s at least somewhat worse. That’s my opinion.
A mental picture keeps coming into my head, though. A defendant in court says, “This wasn’t a hate crime, your honor. I like that little Chink. I just broke his fingers 'cause I was mad at him. He embarrassed me.”
As Malodorous pointed out, “hate” isn’t really the operative word here. It’s kind of a misnomer. Such legislation punishes people who attack others based only on what group that person belongs to: race, sexual orientation, etc… There is no motive other than pure bigotry.
If Joe beats up Jim because Jim looked at him funny, that crime doesn’t go any further than Joe or Jim. If Steve, Karl, Sarah and Terry don’t know either Joe or Jim, they’re not directly affected by the assault. But if Joe beats up Jim because Jim is gay, black, Jewish, whatever, then it’s not just an assault on Jim, it’s also a terroristic threat against anyone who belongs to the same group as Jim. If Jim is gay, and so are Steve and Karl, it’s a lesser assault on Steve and Karl as well. IOW, you get punished for the assault, and you get an additional punishment for the terroristic threat. I don’t see what the problem is.
I’m not sure I agree with your distinction here. Even when “hate” isn’t involved, our society expressly does not view crime as simply a matter between the victim and perpetrator. All crime is viewed as frightening, and a threat to society as a whole - that’s why we have the State prosecute crimes, rather than the victim bringing a suit (as in civil trials, where it really is just between the alleged victim and defendant)*. In fact, prosecutors can (and do) file charges against defendants even when their alleged victims are not all that interested in pressing charges. The community is always the victim of crime, and for violent crime the solution is usually to lock the fellow up.
Now, I understand that members of community X would find it troubling to have Jim wandering around if he thinks they’re fair game for assault. But we, as a society, find it troubling to have anyone wandering around who thinks that anybody is fair game for assault - that’s why we build prisons. Why should community X’s fear that “this guy may beat me because I’m black/gay/jewish/white/whatever” be given any more weight than a neighborhood’s fear that “this guy may beat me on my way to my car because he lives in this neighborhood and needs money for heroin”? I think both concerns are very, very serious, and require a serious response - but I can’t see why one requires a more vigorous response than the other.
Another argument that’s commonly made is that hate crimes encourage similar crimes - but the same can be said of conventional crimes. If I mug an old lady, and get away with it, this sends a signal to other miscreants that old women are easy sources of cash. The solution, again, is the same in both the hate and non-hate cases - criminal prosecution, imprisonment if there’s a conviction.
Crimes are very bad deeds, committed by bad people. Perhaps there’s some fine gradation that can be made between various motivations for the badness - but at the end of the day, I can’t see society benefiting from going to the effort. I have to side with VCO3 on this - hate crime legislation makes little sense.
*Setting aside things like suits brought by governments and punitive damages, for simplicity’s sake.
Not even remotely true. If I punch someone and rob him, it’s not because I hate him. It’s because I wanted to steal and/or sell his stuff. Hate doesn’t enter into it.
The logic is that, when you commit some crimes - say, robbing a black family’s house and then leaving some racist messages spray painted on the house - you are not only harming that family. You are also making other black families feel threatened. The idea of hate crimes might be flawed, but it’s not nearly as dumb as people who call it ‘thought crime’ suggest.
Have you ever acted on that hatred? I don’t think you have, and I don’t think what you wrote here is true.
Motive should be a consideration in determining the seriousness of a crime. People with a conscious can and do commit murder all the time. There is a difference between someone motivated to kill a lover because of a sexual affair and someone motivated to kill for the thrill of it. The person who kills out of passion usually lives with guilt and regret. The person who kills for a thrill or because of race, religion, sexual orientation usually has no remorse and probably feels justified; these are the people with no respect for human life. Women who kill abusive spouses and children who kill abusive parents are not motivated to commit a crime in the same way a person who kills during a robbery.
The same can be said for someone who steals because of hunger and someone who steals because of greed.
I agree with Malodorous. Hate is just a term used to determine motive and motive goes to the root of criminal behavior.
Hate Crime legislation is nothing more than political correctness brought to an extreme. In order to prove it you have to prove what the perp was thinking when he committed the crime. This involves bringing up quasi-relevant things from their past, statements, opinions, jokes etc. and making them legally relevant to their crime.
Besides making a ridiculous amount of extra work for the legal system, it does nothing but force the issue onto the slippery slope of direct evidence vs. emotional feelings, and emotion will win that fight every time!
And its ultimate end will be what its called, namely to make hate a crime. In a way it already has. And that scares me. In America it is not illegal to hate blacks, Jews, or gays and it never ever should be! But the people who support this think that it should. They think that the way you end something bad is just to make a law against it, regardless of how impractical, unenforceable, or fundamentally wrong it is big-picture wise.
Not to mention the unintentional but inevitable side-effect of making the lives of minorities legally not equal, but more valuable than non-minorities.
Hate crime legislation is certainly a legacy of the ugly history of racism, homophobia, and anti-Semitism in this country. As many have noted in this thread, someone who intentionally seeks to injure or threaten people because of race/sexual orientation/religion is conveying a message far greater than “I have a problem with you individually.” And though we don’t have hate crime legislation for someone who attacks old people, I can assure you that the DA and the judge will throw the book at those people.
Intent matters, especially when it’s quite transparent.
As an aside, VC03, how relative is your definition of “rich?” You realize just by virtue of living in the US, you’re rich compared to most of the people in the world, don’t you?
A “hate crime” is not one that’s motivated by hatred for the specific person victimized, but by hatred for the entire group of which the victim is a member. Its target isn’t just that one person, but the entire group. An attack on a Chinese person because of his Chineseness is not the same as a personal attack - it is intended, at least in part, to terrorize and isolate *all * Chinese.
An attack on a Yankees fan because of his affiliation does not, however, terrorize and isolate all Yankees fans. There is no history, or credible fear of occurrence, of a systematic campaign of discrimination and terrorization of Yankees fans, other than by the Steinbrenner family. But there are many ethnicities and religions for which that history and fear are quite real and credible.
Motivation does obviously matter in assessing the degree of severity of the act. So does the number of persons targeted. Does that help explain what hate crimes are?
If I understand you correctly, the robbery is not what makes it a hate crime, it’s the racist messages. So, what if the racist messages are displayed in a non-criminal way? Spray paint on someone else’s house is illegal no matter what, so let’s say I paint the same racist messages on my own car or house, or on the internet, but somewhere that they are clearly visible to the same black family. Assume the level of publicity is the same, so other black families are equally likely to hear about it.
Certainly, some will feel threatened, but what is the crime?
TJdude825, people still have the right to exercise free speech in the U.S. Anyone can slap up a website, write a book, or put a bumper sticker on a car to convey a belief or philosophy despite how offensive or distasteful it is to others. I support free speech for the Klan or Nazi group because, unfortunately, it protects my right to free speech. I know cross burning is a state issue. I am sure it is probably some kind of fire code violation in many states.
The hangman’s noose and swastika fall under free speech. I suppose it depends on whether the free speech is intended to intimidate and prevent a person from accessing his/her civil rights.
As people have pointed out in some detail already, both motive and intent figure into the definition of a crime. On April 13, 1990, a large, strong man broke several of my ribs and plunged a blade into my chest, taking several thousand dollars from me. He was never prosecuted for it.
And if I have my way, he never will be; I’m very grateful to him. You see, he was a cardiac surgeon doing a bypass operation that saved my life.
The degree of a crime, or even its criminality, is often dependent on what the intent of the person committing the putatively criminal act was.
Likewise, there are several reasons for the sentences imposed at the end of criminal trials. Sometimes it’s purely punishment. Sometimes it’s the rehabilitation of the offender. But very often it is for deterrence. Not only will the man sentenced for the crime be prevented from committing another crime, but the severity of the sentence imposed will, according to theory, cause others who might be considering the commission of that crime to have second thoughts.
Now, the basic character of a hate crimes law is that it functions as an aggravation condition in the criteria for sentencing. Tom, Dick, and Harry each severally held someone at gunpoint, and were charged with assault. But Tom drew his gun on a policeman whom he mistakenly thought in the dark was a burglar ransacking his house, when in fact the cops had been called by the neighbors. Dick acted in the heat of an argument with Pete. And Harry did it because he hates Japanese, and Sakuro had the misfortune of crossing his path while he was angry.
Take note that the same crime was committed in each case. Most people would feel Tom should be let off lightly or have his case dismissed, because he acted in a case of mistaken identity. Dick of course gets a normal sentence for drawing a gun on someone else in an argument.
But let’s look at what Harry did. He’s not being sentenced for hating Japanese people. He’s privileged to be prejudiced against them all he wants, in thought and, more or less, in word. He’s being sentenced for holding someone – Sakuro – at gunpoint. But not because he hates Sakuro in particular; rather, because Sakuro is Japanese. Law-abiding people of Japanese descent should not have to be afraid of being assaulted by people like Harry, according to the conventional wisdom of American society. So the sentencing criteria are defined in a manner that says, “We want to deter people who hate on the basis of race, color, creed, etc., from committing crimes on the basis of their hatred for groups identified on the basis of race, color, creed, etc.”
It’s a deterrent. It’s imposed on an actual criminal act, in the example an assault, not for “thought crime.” It judges on the basis of intent in exactly the same way as premeditated murder is distinguished from manslaughter.