Everything about Hate Crime totally explained
Hate crimes (also known as
bias motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her membership in a certain
social group, usually defined by
racial group,
religion,
sexual orientation,
disability,
ethnicity,
nationality,
age,
gender,
gender identity, or
political affiliation.
Hate crime can take many forms. Incidents may involve physical assault, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, or offensive graffiti or letters.
History
Concern about hate crimes has become increasingly prominent among policymakers in many nations and at all levels of
government in recent years, but the phenomenon isn't new. Examples from the past include
Roman persecution of
Christians, the
Ottoman genocide of
Armenians, and the
Nazi "
final solution" for the
Jews, and more recently, the
ethnic cleansing in
Bosnia and
genocide in
Rwanda. Hate crimes have shaped and sometimes defined world history. In the
United States, racial and religious biases have inspired most hate crimes. As
Europeans began to
colonize the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries,
Native Americans increasingly became the targets of bias-motivated
intimidation and
violence. During the past two centuries, some of the more typical examples of hate crimes in the US include
lynchings of
African Americans,
cross burnings to drive black families from predominantly white neighborhoods,
assaults on
gay,
lesbian and
transgender people, and the painting of
swastikas on Jewish
synagogues.
Hate crime victims
In the United States, anti-Black bias was the most frequently reported hate crime motivation. (African-Americans constitute the second-largest minority group; Hispanics are the largest). Of the nearly 8,000 hate crimes reported to the FBI in 1995, almost 3,000 of them were motivated by bias against African Americans. Other frequently reported bias motivations were anti-white, anti-Jewish, anti-gay, and anti-Hispanic. Sometimes (as in
Bosnia and Herzegovina), the laws focus on
war crimes,
genocide, and
crimes against humanity with the prohibition against discriminatory action limited to public officials.
Bulgaria
Bulgarian criminal law prohibits certain crimes motivated by racism and xenophobia, but a 1999 report by the
European Commission against Racism and Intolerance found that it doesn't appear that those provisions "have ever resulted in convictions before the courts in Bulgaria."
Croatia
Croatian law allows for consideration of any extenuating or aggravating circumstances in sentencing, but no explicit provision is made for bias-based motivations. In recent years judges have used this provision to increase sentences on the basis of racist motives.
France
In 2003, France enacted penalty-enhancement hate crime laws for crimes motivated by bias against the victim's actual or perceived ethnicity, nation, race, religion, or sexual orientation. The penalties for murder were raised from 30 years (for non-hate crimes) to life imprisonment (for hate crimes), and the penalties for violent attacks leading to permanent disability were raised from 10 years (for non-hate crimes) to 15 years (for hate crimes). Public prosecutors may press charges even if the victim doesn't file a complaint. However, as of 2003, no convictions had been attained under the law.
Hungary
Violent action, cruelty, and coercion by threat made on the basis of the victim's actual or perceived national, ethnic, or religious status are punishable under article 174/B of the
Hungarian Criminal Code.
Article 299 of the Criminal Code defines incitement to national, racist, or religious hatred as a specific offense. This article has been used in political trials of suspected members of the banned organization
Hizb-ut-Tahrir.
Scotland
In
Scottish Common law the courts can take any aggravating factor into account when sentencing someone found guilty of an offence. There is specific legislation dealing with the offences of incitement of racial hatred, racially-aggravated harassment and offences aggravated by religious prejudice. A
Scottish Executive working party examined the issue of hate crime and ways of combating crime motivated by social prejudice, reporting in 2004. Its main recommendations were not implemented, but in their manifestos for the
Scottish Parliament election, 2007 several political parties included commitments to legislate in this area, including the
Scottish National Party who now form the Scottish Government. The Offences (Aggravation by Prejudice) (Scotland) Bill was introduced on 19 May 2008 by
Patrick Harvie MSP, having been prepared with support from the Scottish Government.
Spain
Article 22(4) of the
Spanish Penal Code includes a penalty-enhancement provision for crimes motivated by bias against the victim's ideology, beliefs, religion, ethnicity, race, nationality, gender, sexual orientation, illness, or disability. The Code also "punishes
anyone who “advocates or promotes genocide,” with genocide defined to require that acts be committed “with the intent to destroy in whole or in part any identifiable group.” “Identifiable group,” in turn, is defined to mean “any section of the public distinguished by skin color, racial group, religion, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” Section 319, adopting the same definition of “identifiable group,” punishes the incitement or expression of hatred against such a group."
In the
United States federal prosecution is possible for hate crimes committed on the basis of a person's race, color, religion, or nation origin when engaging in a federally protected activity. As of October 2007,
Congress is considering the
Matthew Shepard Act (Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007), legislation that would add
gender,
gender identity,
sexual orientation, and
disability to the list.
Forty-five states and the
District of Columbia have statutes criminalizing various types of hate crimes. Thirty-one states and the District of Columbia have statutes creating a
civil cause of action in addition to the criminal penalty for similar acts. Twenty-seven states and the District of Columbia have statutes requiring the state to collect hate crime statistics
According to the FBI Hate Crime Statistics report for 2006, hate crimes increased nearly 8 percent nationwide, with a total of 7,722 incidents and 9,080 offenses reported by participating law enforcement agencies. Of the 5,449 crimes against persons, 46 percent were classified as intimidation and 31.9 percent as simple assaults. 81 percent of the 3,593 crimes against property were acts of vandalism or destruction. 58.6 percent of the 7,330 known offenders were white and 20.6 black. More than half, 52 percent, of the 9,652 victims identified were targeted because of racial group.
Arguments for hate crime laws
Justifications for harsher punishments for hate crimes focus on the notion that hate crimes cause greater individual and societal harm. In
Wisconsin v. Mitchell, the
Supreme Court of the United States unanimously found that "bias-motivated crimes are more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes, inflict distinct emotional harms on their victims, and incite community unrest.... The State's desire to redress these perceived harms provides an adequate explanation for its penalty-enhancement provision over and above mere disagreement with offenders' beliefs or biases. As
Blackstone said long ago, 'it is but reasonable that, among crimes of different natures, those should be most severely punished which are the most destructive of the public safety and happiness.'" It is said that, when the core of a person’s identity is attacked, the degradation and
dehumanization is especially severe, and additional emotional and physiological problems are likely to result. Society then, in turn, can suffer from the
disempowerment of a group of people. Furthermore, it's asserted that the chances for retaliatory crimes are greater when a hate crime has been committed. The
riots in
Los Angeles, California, that followed the beating of Rodney King, a Black motorist, by a group of
White police officers are cited as support for this argument.
Arguments in opposition to hate crime laws
The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously found that hate crime statutes which criminalize bias-motivated speech or symbolic speech conflict with free speech rights because they isolated certain words based on their content or viewpoint .
Arguments against hate crime legislation include the following:
Perpetrators of the same criminal act shouldn't be treated differently because they hold different beliefs or motives.
Over time, these provisions might be disregarded and hate crime laws and associated case law could evolve to the point where speaking out strongly against a particular group or its actions could be construed as a libelous hate crime, violating rights to freedom of expression, thought, religion (among others).
Penalties that don't include hate-crimes enhancement are already sufficient, in that vandalism, assault and murder have always been illegal and subject to prosecution. The fact that they still occur doesn't justify infringing on the freedoms of speech and religion.
It brings the law into disrepute and further divides society, as groups apply to have their critics silenced.
Religious practices will become subject to government regulation, violating the separation of church and state.
Allowing a self-declared victim to decide if a crime has occurred violates the principle of objective justice.
If it's true that all violent crimes are the result of the perpetrator's contempt for the victim, then all crimes are hate crimes. Thus if there's no alternate rationale for prosecuting some people more harshly for the same crime based on who the victim is, then different defendants treated unequally under the law, which violates the United States Constitution.Further Information
Get more info on 'Hate Crime'.
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