Why Hate Crime laws are a really really bad idea

Great Debates
61

I understand the motivation behind the laws, I just feel that in the long run, if they last, they will restrict freedom of speech. I don’t think it’s American to punish people for their beliefs, no matter how reprehensible they are. All they will do is drive racists underground, since they only punish racists who are public about their beliefs. I think racism can be better fought by letting racists speak freely about their beliefs, most intelligent people will see how stupid they are.

What if hate crime laws were extended to crimes based on hatred of certain political beliefs, if beating someone up because they are a communist got you more than the typical assault charges? That would make a lot of people think twice before talking politics, who knows if you might end up in a fist-fight with someone who’s a member of a party you have made speeches against? It’s not that much of a stretch.

What about people who were prejudiced but changed, or who have said things they normally wouldn’t in the heat of the moment? I’ll admit that I have used racial slurs before. I was ashamed of myself later, but some people heard them - I could be made out to be a bigot if the right people were made to talk and a prosecutor wanted to.

I wouldn’t be so scared of hate crimes legislation if it was only applied to serious crimes like murder and arson. Even though I would disagree with giving someone a tougher sentence because of their motivation and/or beliefs, in those cases I would probably want a worse punishment than they would get anyway - relatively innocent people would not be hurt. When people think ‘hate crimes’ they think of the killings in Jasper, of church burnings. But people have been prosecuted under hate crime legislation merely for insulting someone on the phone. There will always be people trying to stretch the laws, to test how far they can be applied.

There are already a wide range of punishments for various crimes. Assault can get you a fine, or several years in jail, depending on the circumstances. The same thing with threats. Existing laws work, we don’t need more, especially ones that legislate thought.

62

Two side points need picking up on here, from late on page one of this thread:

  1. Robo asked, in essence, why do we need more laws to let judges do what they already have the right to do? The answer to that is, they don’t already have that right. An exacerbating or ameliorating factor is (almost always) spelled out in law, and for them to apply one more or less based on their own feelings is contrary to judicial ethics. I put “almost always” in there because there are a few which are common-law-based and not in statute. The general idea would be that a “hate crime” – i.e., a crime committed against a particular victim because that victim belongs to a group which is the subject of hate or a related feeling on the part of the accused – would be one of the exacerbating factors a judge (or sentencing jury) may consider if so specified in statute.

  2. Are such laws contrary to federalism? It’s possible they could be, but not the ones I’ve heard of being proposed. Each state, in the “ideal” situation, would pass a Hate Crimes Protection law making hate crimes an exacerbating factor; the Federal statute which has been proposed and lost by narrow votes would govern offenses taking place on national territory (Army bases, in D.C., etc.) and across state lines. (It’s important to note that when a person flees across a state line having committed a heinous crime, that in itself is a criminal act under Federal law; some significant prosecutions have been done on the basis of that act. There is also the famous section 4 of the U.S. Code that makes violation of a person’s constitional rights a (Federal) criminal act; these would cover life and liberty under the Fourteenth Amendment.)

63

A last attempt to clear away the fuzz:

Such laws are and will be ineffective in deterring the violent and moronic loons who do these things. They stimulate further ill-feeling against the groups they are designed to protect, by suggesting that the lives of “protected” individuals are more worthy than the lives of others. They are defined and applied in a predjudicial manner (i.e. by defining certain interracial violent crimes as motivated by economics rather than hate). They violate the principles of equality.

And you still can’t execute the Jasper murderers any deader with them.

64

>>>
Because in essense they are saying that why a person is killed is the real crime, not the act of
killing itself.
<<<

NO! that is NOT what they are saying!

They’re saying that a “hate crime” MOTIVE can be considered an aggravating factor in the commission of another crime.

Once again, the “anti” side of the argument misrepresents the premise in order to find something to criticize.

If the only arguments against the idea are straw-man arguments like this

65

Why then don’t they make the laws so they can be used in ANY case where hatred of a group was a motive to commit a crime? There are ‘hate crimes’ committed against homosexuals, people of certain economic classes, people of certain political beliefs, people of certain professions…why are they limited to race and religion?

66

If you are going to accuse an idea of being illogical on this board, then generally a proof of how said statement is illogical is generally needed. Seeing as how no proof is given, I fail to see how the label of illogical seems to fit. Straw men??? You haven’t exactly stated anything breathtaking yourself.

-Rugbyman, proving that pedanticism isn’t the domain of the left on this board :slight_smile:

67

>>>
Hate crime laws do impose on free speech. Let’s say you hate Korean people for some
reason. If you never say anything to anyone about how much you hate Koreans, if you
assault one you will probably get a lesser sentence than if you make speeches about how evil
Koreans are and have some anti-Korean web page.
<<<

That’s no differrent from any crime you commit. If you keep quiet about what you intend and why then it’s mu more likely you’ll get away with it.

That’s not a “ree-speech” issue at all. If speech provides evidence to support conviction on a criminal act you committed then it’s not just speech anymore it’s evidence.

68

<<<
quote:

                                   More false logic.

                                   &gt;&gt;&gt;

                                   &lt;&lt;&lt;

                                   NO! that is NOT what they are saying!

                                   They're saying that a "hate crime" MOTIVE can be considered an aggravating
                                   factor in the commission of another crime.

                                   Once again, the "anti" side of the argument misrepresents the premise in
                                   order to find something to criticize.

>>>
If you are going to accuse an idea of being illogical on this board, then generally a proof of how said statement is illogical is generally needed.
<<<
And was provided. If you can’t see it then you surely won’t but just for those who can, let’s recap…

Premise…
They are saying that why a person is killed is the real crime, not the act of killing itself.

Response…
They’re saying that a “hate crime” MOTIVE can be considered an aggravating factor in the commission of another crime.

Conclusion…
Since hate crime laws do not create new crimes and merely permit additional motives to be considered aggravating factors then the premises statement that (“why a person is killed is the real crime”) is demostrably untrue. Since that untrue statement is used as the foundation for any and all conclusions it draws, none of the conclusions can be considered to have any meaningful foundation.

>>>
You haven’t exactly stated anything breathtaking yourself.
<<<

Nope. The truth is not breathtaking, nor even very interesting usually. That’s why we don’t hear very much of it.

69

Well since you appear not to have understood it, that is hardly surprising.

**

By “first class” do you mean women? According to most hate crime laws this would indeed be a hate crime. The “victims” would be no more protected than any other victims because it’s already too late for that. However since the motive was obviously (by your description) a hate crime motive then the crim should have been treted as having an aggravation factor (the hate crime motive) and punished additionally harshly. Which is what “hate crime” laws state.

I’m curious. Do you know where this happenned? Was it in a “hate crime” district and was the issue of hate crimes discussed in the press. I’m interested to know how well the concept is working and where (if at all) it is failing.

**

Absolutely true, and irrelevant to the argument because you still refuse to understand what a hate crime law does and doesn’t do.

It doesn’t “protect” (or ignore) any specified group of people (at least not if written properly, don’t get off track on some of the screwy ones that were badly written). It does not relate to the victim at all. It concerns itself only with the motive and intent of the attacker.

Let’s try some examples to see if I can make this crear to you.

Hate Crimes…
White guy attacks black guy because he’s in a white neighbourhood and “shouldn’t be there”.

Black guy attacks white guy because he’s in a black neighbourhood and “shouldn’t be there”.

Gang attacks and rapes a woman because they hate women and want to send a message about a woman’s place.

Bunch of guys burn a cross on a black guy’s lawn because they want to send him a message that he shouldn’t be in that neighbourhood.

Not Hate Crimes…
White guy attacks black guy because he’s Jonesing & needs some drug money.

Black guy attacks white guy because he’s Jonesing & needs some drug money.

Gang attacks and rapes a woman because they’re drunk and horny and don’t care who they hurt to get layed.

Bunch of guys burn a cross on a black guy’s lawn because they were carrying it home from a pageant and felt like having a bonfire.

…

As you’ll see from all these examples, the perp’s the same, the victim’s the same, the victim’s feelings afterwards are not questioned, no reference is made to any prior statements by the perps. There is, in every case, an initial crime. The PC status of the perp and victim and the “feelings” of the victim afterwards carry no relevence.

The only difference is the motive. Why was the crime comitted? If it was comitted in order to intimidate an entire group of people then the crime can be considered worse and an aggravating factor added to the sentence.

**

All such crimes ARE more heavily punished under hate crime laws if, and only if, it can be shown that the purpose of the crime was to hurt the whole class of people to which the victim was perceived to belong.

In fact your misunderstanding helps raise two last examples which may help you understand better.

A guy beats another guy half to death because he falsely believes him to be gay.

There is no cross-anything crime here, but this is still a hate crime because the motive for the crime is still a hate crime motive.

Someone shouts at a Jew/Black/White/WASP/Woman/Gay/Hispanic how much he/she hates Jews/Blacks/Whites/WASPs/Women/Gays/Hispanics. There is no hate crime here because there is no crime, so there is no motive for a crime, so it’s just protected speech. Ugly, yes, but not a hate crime.

70

Excellent example.

The second man was targetting postal workers as a class, so he would, indeed be guilty of a hate crime because his motive was to frighten an entire class of people. The prosecutor should have recognised this and charged him under the hate crime laws.

It wasn’t a case of a problem with the hate crime law just good/bad luck in the choice of prosecutor/judge/jury. The sort of problem that goes on all the time regardless of hate crime laws.

71

Hope you had a good vacation (or hibernation, or whatever), Neil.

But your ideas are no more “crear” to me. Apart from the bizarreness of your tango on the subject of cross-burning*, hate crime laws are still deeply flawed by mind-reading and selective interpretation.

By the way, California, a hate crimes law state, will require Buford Furrow (the man who shot up a Jewish community center and also killed a postal worker) to serve at best life in prison. Texas gave the death penalty to all but one perpetrator (who implicated the others) in the infamous “dragging” death of a black man. It appears that Texas cares more about such victims than does California.

*We recently had a local case of white youths burning a cross on the lawn of a black family living in a mostly white neighborhood. The perps were satisfyingly whacked with jail terms, fines and extended probations. All without the benefit of a hate crimes statute. None of them tried the ingenious defense that they were on the way home from a pageant and wanted to warm themselves at a bonfire. I doubt it would have worked.

72

I am not adamantly opposed to “hate crime” legislation. Such legislation is, in my opinion, utterly unnecessary, but it doesn’t do any real harm. The problem with such legislation is that it’s of purely symbolic value. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with symbolism, occasionally. But let’s be realistic.

If the James Byrd and Matthew Shepard cases proved ANYTHING, they proved that in this day and age, even in the most conservative states of the Union, you CANNOT murder a black man or a homosexual and walk away scot-free!

Hate crime laws would not have added a single day to the life-without-parole sentences given to Matthew Shepard’s killers. And they can’t execute those creeps from Jasper a second time. So, what WOULD such laws accomplish? TO make legislators feel good. To let them believe they’ve made a difference.

Fact is, the cases where hate crime laws could and SHOULD make a difference are in the petty, minor crimes.In murder cases, “hate” is irrelevant. I mean, the idea that knifing an innocent bystander because he’s black is worse than knifing an innocent bystander because “he looked at me funny” makes no sense to me. Murder is murder, regardless of motive.

But in smaller, pettier crimes, “hate” is worth considering:

  1. A stupid college boy who pelts a random house with eggs as a fraternity pledge stunt is NOT as bad as a Klansman who eggs the house of the first black family to move into the neighborhood. The college boy deserves to spend a few nights in jail, and a stiff fine. The Klansman deserves some prison time.

  2. A jerk who spray paints his girlfriend’s name on a subway car should be sentenced to 1000 hours washing graffiti off subway cars. A neo-Nazi who spray-paints a swastika on a synagogue deserves serious jail time.

Motives DO matter! And hate crime laws COULD help in such cases of assault and vandalism. But they shouldn’t have any bearing on serious cases like the Byrd or SHepard murders.

73

**

I believe there’s been a couple of black on white crimes prosecuted as hate crimes here in Chicago. I certainly remember a flap where it wasn’t done & some thought it should have been and another occasion where the charge was laid as a hate crime & others said it shouldn’t be.

I don’t think attacks on the wealthy would be covered because that relates to something you’ve done rather than what you are, but don’t quote me.

It is certainly true that prosecutors are comparatively loth to add a hate crime rider when the victim isn’t one of the “popular” victim groups, but that is a problem with the application of the law more than with the law itself. Remember prosecutors are politicians, so they have to consider their career.

74

Ahh, the old “use a completely-out-of-context example to make my point” debating trick. Let’s put this in context, shall we?

Buford Furrow–with a name like that how could he NOT grow up to be a white supremacist?–didn’t get sentenced to death because he copped a plea bargain. Cite: http://www.cnn.com/2001/LAW/01/24/furrow.plea.crim/index.html

Does Texas, with its assembly line death penalty, care more about victims than California? My thought on the death penalty is that it is exactly what the anti-hate crime law folks hate about hate-crime laws: it’s an ineffectual, feel-good, poorly administered, discriminatory piece of legislation that makes politicians look good, doesn’t do diddly to prevent crime, and sure as hell doesn’t help the victim.