More on Hate Crimes
Back on Monday, we had a pretty good discussion going about hate crimes. Frequent Lean Left commenter LarryE expands on this theme:
The usual (flawed) understanding of “hate crimes” legislation is that it would make the hate itself, rather than any actions based on the hate, the crime. It’s that misunderstanding that leads people to fear that “hate crimes” will lead inexorably to “thought crimes,” to people being prosecuted strictly for their opinions.
The thing is, I don’t know of anyone who’s proposed anything approaching that, i.e., proposed a law to make hate itself illegal. “It’s now illegal to be a bigot.” Besides the Constitutional issues, it’s absurd on its face to seriously entertain the notion of being able to simply outlaw racism or ban sexist or homophobic remarks or whatever – or at least it’s absurd to think any such law would actually achieve any of those ends or even be enforceable. So let’s drop that particular misconception and focus on the real argument, one which, as is explicit in the very phrase “hate crimes,” refers to “crimes motivated by hate.”
The whole thing is worth a read.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:33 am
Baloney.
Hate crimes legislation provides more punishment for crimes depending on the offender’s attitudes about his victims. It does in fact punish certain thoughts, regardless of all the dancing around it.
I have a better idea.
Punish criminals for what they do, and don’t worry about what they think.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:38 am
And with one fell swoop, “mariner” proves that s/he hasn’t read or paid attention to any of the debate that has surrounded this, here and in the links, over the last week.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:37 pm
Indeed.
Just for starters (not having read any of this current debate, but being somewhat familiar with it in general), what’s the difference between:
Negligent homicide.
Manslaughter.
And murder.
Each results in the death of a person.
Intent is what makes all the difference in the eyes of society and the law.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Added to the fact that rarely are minority attacks on whites considered hate crimes.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:43 pm
Er, I don’t think this post is an entirely fair analysis of things, tgirsch. It’s not a matter of understanding of the law itself, it’s a matter of concern about the law’s implementation and the slippery slope. We’ve seen places like Canada where “hate crimes” do criminalize hateful speech or association itself. American laws aren’t like that currently, but they probably already have a chilling effect on speech that could bolster a “hate crimes” accusation in the future, and have been cited by courts upholding restrictions on free speech in certain fora as well.
July 31st, 2008 at 12:46 pm
Paratrooper: you’ve got to be careful with that.
The official statistics do count such things as hate crimes (wherever the police agency involved reports it as one).
However, in the public perception (news and other forms of TV entertainment especially), there are no hate crimes against whites.
Of course, I’ve discovered that reported hate crimes are a small subset of all reported crimes (something on the order of 1%). Which leads me to ask, why do we need a special law for these special motives, when it could be wrapped up in “$CRIME_TYPE with malice aforethought” ?
July 31st, 2008 at 12:48 pm
According to Kynn’s statement in an earlier thread, roughly one in five racially-motivated hate crimes targets a white individual. That would be one in ten of all hate crimes.
I’m not sure if that’s in terms of prosecution, or just federally mandated reporting, though. They certainly don’t seem to get much in the way of press, but that shouldn’t be surprising.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:05 pm
Largely because the two would be different things. There doesn’t need to be malice aforethought for there to be a hate crime, nor is there a hate crime in every case with malice aforethought. Most crimes specify what degree of malice aforethought needs to be involved anyway.
The intent is to punish crimes motivated by bigotry to a degree beyond what other crimes with similar levels of malice aforethought may get. It’s not because an asshole wanted to ruin Mr (insert racial, religious, et all group here)’s window that it’s a hate crime, it’s because said asshole did so in because of Mr (insert racial, religious, et all group here) was (insert racial, religious, et all group here).
That may well be a good policy decision. I’m just not convinced it won’t encourage people who want to ban speech about protected groups, or discourage people who would otherwise speak about protected groups but now have to worry about not just menacing but menacing with a felony strapped to the side.
Yes, there’s a lot of disgusting speech out there. I’d rather know who thinks that stuff peacefully, so we can either debate the matter or at least know who to step away from when near sharp stuff.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:47 pm
I’m sorry, I have to agree with mariner, at least in spirit. tgirsch, negligent homicide implies someone was killed by your negligence – you didn’t intend someone to die. Manslaughter is similar – you did something very stupid that resulted in a death, but you didn’t set out to kill someone. Murder is when you intended to kill them. You tried to kill them, and you succeeded.
This is very different from the idea of a hate crime. The problem most folks have with the hate crime idea is not just that it implies the criminalization of certain ideas, but that it trivializes crimes committed for traditional reasons – you have something I want, and I’m going to take it.
It says that if someone beats me to death for my wallet, well, gee, he just wanted your money. 10 to 15 with parole in five. But wait! Maybe he beat you to death because you’re . Well, in that case, we’ll give him 20-life, no parole.
Explain to me just how the person who was killed for his wallet was less valuable than the “protected group” victim? Why is the killer more dangerous because he dislikes a certain group than if he’s willing to kill *anyone* if he thinks they might have money he can take?
I’ll confess that I have not read the thread referred to here, but I’ve read enough threads on this to know the gist of it. The dragging murder in Jerrell, TX years back was a horrendous crime, and would be no less horrific if committed for no real reason at all. I don’t care what the motivation was, the perpetrators should get the maximum punishment.
THAT is why the idea of a hate crime bothers me. The effect is the trivialization of crimes committed against anyone not in a protected class.
July 31st, 2008 at 1:51 pm
Harold,
You’re palming a card on us. Do not conflate intent with motive. They are not the same thing.
The stratification you used is about the amount of harm you desired to cause. That is to say, the difference between Murder and Manslaughter is whether you intended for your victim to die. This has absolutely no bearing on why you wanted to victimize them.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:07 pm
My bottom line is this, assault is assault. It should not matter what a person is thinking when they do it.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Sometimes I think WTF and then again well, I just don’t know. Y’all have all heard the old, hackneyed phrase “It’s the thought that counts.” This has always perturbed me. It’s not what you think that counts it’s what you do that counts. Another old and hackneyed phrase says something about “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” If you kill someone while love fills your heart do you get an automatic pardon? Keep it simple stupid.
July 31st, 2008 at 2:52 pm
Mike M:
As I’ve said in other threads, the problem is with the intimidation and implicit threats that come with such actions. As I’ve said before, the explicit victim isn’t the real target of hate crimes — it’s others like that victim. You’re sending a message. That’s what can’t be tolerated.
And as LarryE aptly points out in his post, if hate crimes can’t be prosecuted because we should only “punish the actions themselves,” then things like mafia protection rackets can’t be prosecuted, either.
All this isn’t to say that we shouldn’t tread carefully with respect to hate crimes and legislation surrounding them. Of course we should. But that doesn’t mean we should pretend they don’t exist, or ignore the broader scope of what’s being done. Any law that can’t recognize the obvious difference between a burning cross and a flaming bag of poo is, in my estimation, flawed.
July 31st, 2008 at 3:22 pm
And as LarryE aptly points out in his post, if hate crimes can’t be prosecuted because we should only “punish the actions themselves,” then things like mafia protection rackets can’t be prosecuted, either.
Why can’t the action of protecting the mafia be prosecuted under the act itself?
July 31st, 2008 at 3:26 pm
Huh? I think you misunderstand. I’m talking about the old school protection rackets, of the “Gee, it sure would be a shame if something bad happened to this place” sort. There’s no action to prosecute in these cases, only implied threats. Unless, of course, someone actually fails to do what the mafia wants, in which case there is action to prosecute — but even in that case, the action isn’t just aimed at the person who failed to comply; it’s aimed at everyone who’s been approached by the mafia. “If you don’t do what we want, what happened to that guy could also happen to you.”
It’s no different, in principle, than a hate crime. A message is being sent that is implicitly (if not explicitly) intimidating and threatening. I don’t see why that’s so hard for people to understand.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:00 pm
I agree with Mike M., different punishments for the same physical crime belittles the victim who does not fall into any recognized minority status. It makes the thought process of the criminal part of the crime. Plain and simple. If you beat someone up you have committed assault. If later it is discovered the person is a minority, you have committed a thought, err, “hate crime”.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:06 pm
sean:
Nice straw man there. Did you build it all by yourself? Hate crimes have to do with a lot more than just the races (or other group memberships) of the people involved. The majority of inter-group crimes are not, in fact, hate crimes, and almost nobody says that they are.
I fail to see why we should turn a blind eye to the circumstances surrounding a crime when determining how to prosecute and punish that crime.
And for probably the dozenth time, in a hate crime prosecution, you are punishing the action.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:13 pm
tgirsch,
That clears things up. I was thinking “protection” as in money laundering schemes.
But extortion (which is what the ‘protection racket’ is) is still an action. The motive behind it, greed, hatred, amusement, whatever is irrelevent to the action of threatening someones person or property.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:24 pm
But you are adding an extra punishment for the thought. How is that not criminalizing the thought?
Let’s break it down:
Assault = 10 years
Assault + Hate = 15 years.
Does this not imply that Assault is a 10 year crime but commiting the additional “Thought Crime” carries a punishment of 5 years?
July 31st, 2008 at 4:24 pm
tgirsch-
Mariner can speak for himself, but it looks like he certainly has considered the debate and that he (like myself) has simply arrived at a different conclusion than you.
The Unitarian Universalist Church shooting was, undoubtedly, a hate crime.
Should it be treated worse than the Chipman Street murders (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_of_Channon_Christian_and_Christopher_Newsom), which are the worst crimes in Knox County’s modern history and which are coming up for trial in February, 2009?
The young man and the young woman were kidnapped/carjacked, tortured, sodomized, raped and killed. She was forced to gargle Draino (or something like it) and was left to suffocate (from a plastic garbage bag) in a trash can.
The young man was simply shot after being tortured, raped, sodomized, etc.
I understand and respect your arguments and the reasoning behind hate crime legislation, I just reach a contrary conclusion when it comes to creating a special class of crimes based on the perpetrator’s feelings about the ethnic (etc.) group of the victim(s).
Hate crimes are not the only crimes that send messages to potential victims.
Crime rates also send intimidating messages to the public and potential victims.
When I am in Memphis (or other large cities), I find myself constantly checking the location and accessibility of my weapon(s) because I have concerns about violent crime.
Anecdotally, when I was in school in Memphis (in the late 1970s or early 1980s), a rapist, dubbed the “preppie rapist” by local media as a result of his style of dress, was terrorizing East Memphis women.
He was quite the buzz of the media and the city and caused a lot of fear among women.
Interestingly, he engaged in a catastrophic failure of victim selection with his last targeted victim, because she shot him.
He was transported to St. Francis Hospital (as I recall the shooter/intended victim lived in an apartment complex between the hospital and the Post Office).
The rapist survived and went to prison, but his actions resulted in a good bit of fear (if not paranoia) among a lot of women until one young lady with a handgun put a stop to his spree.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:26 pm
tgirsch-
I forgot to put the first 5 paragraphs in the preceding post (i.e. Baloney, etc) in quotes.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:32 pm
chris:
Fixed.
I think we’re going to have to agree to disagree here. To you, a terrorist attack is really no different than any other sort of assault, and I just can’t wrap my head around that sort of logic.
Yu-Ain:
Even in your gross oversimplification, you forgot: hate without assault — 0 years.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:33 pm
Because it is damn near impossible to get inside someone’s head and determine that for a fact. The black guy who beat the white guy to death may have done it because of race, or gender, or the fact that the victim was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.
The only chance to use motive and intent is to determine IF they committed the crime. Once that’s determined, the reason behind it is irrelevant. You don’t punish beating someone to death differently based on if you think it’s hate or not.
Besides, I don’t trust YOUR definition of hate. Unless you like the idea of George W. Bush defining what a hate crime is. Because as soon as you grant the government that power, another W. comes along and holds those reins, thus redefining what ‘hate’ means.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:37 pm
tgirsch, so hate + crime > crime?
Sorry, I can’t wrap my head around that.
And all criminals end up harming more than their intended victims. The Beltway Snipers caused a lot of panic and fear, and there was no particular ‘hate’ specifics there.
I just can’t understand the logic in saying crime is worse when done with a specific motive and that you have Wonder Woman’s lasso and can perfectly get a person’s motive from them when you wrap it around their torso.
I believe in the death penalty as a punishment, but don’t think our court systems are good enough to mettle it out correctly, I’m not about to say “sure, I’ll throw in mind reading ability to boot!”.
What is so wrong with simply punishing them for their crimes, regardless of motive?
July 31st, 2008 at 4:44 pm
Robb:
Because, at the end of the day, what you’re asking us to do is pretend that spraypainting a swastika on the side of a Jew’s house is not the slightest bit different than spraypainting “Jack loves Jill” there. You’re asking us to pretend that terrorism simply doesn’t exist, or at the very least that we shouldn’t treat terrorism-related crimes any differently than we should treat other, run-of-the-mill crimes.
July 31st, 2008 at 4:55 pm
tgirsch,
Vandalism is vandalism. Threats are just that, threats. They are illegal. ALL threats are bad, be it extortion, racism, or just general pissed-offness.
Spray painting “DIE BITCH” on your ex’s house is a crime, both vandalism and as a threat. Neither requires “hate crime” to punish but would probably not result in one any way, although there was plenty of hate.
Are you willing to let George W. Bush define what a hate crime is? Because as soon as another Republican gets in charge, that’s exactly what will happen.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:02 pm
Nice strawman, there. Did you build it yourself?
Last I checked, the former was a rather clear threat, while the latter probably isn’t. We have laws about threats that are not particularly related to intent or motive, instead focusing on content.
An actual, relevant example would be “Die idiot” versus “Die (insert racial or religious group here)”, and “Die idiot” versus “Die idiot” by a known bigot scrawled on the wall. There’s some damned good reasons for hate crime laws making that distinction, but it’s rather significantly different from the theoretical attributes that you’re pulling out of your ass.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:04 pm
Are you willing to let George W. Bush define what a hate crime is?
No, but then, who’s arguing that we should? The job of defining what is or is not a hate crime falls to the legislature, not to the executive. And the job of determining whether or not a particular charge meets that definition is the job of the judiciary and a jury of the accused’s peers.
As for “hate crime” laws themselves, they are merely a recognition that some assaults (or other crimes) carry with them an implicit threat or other such attempt at intimidation. From that perspective, you’re not “mind reading” any more than you are when you try to decide whether the guy intentionally or accidentally shot his wife.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:06 pm
But hey, at least you’re willing to admit that you see no difference between the Swastika and the “Jack loves Jill.” Most self-proclaimed opponents of hate crime legislation don’t have the stones to admit that level of blindness and lack of common sense. So kudos to you for that.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:11 pm
I use the Bush bogeyman in the most general of senses. At some point, someone you DON’T agree with is going to decide what constitutes hate or not.
Determining intent does not require special hate crime parameters.
Here’s a scenario. Willy is a militant, gay, black man who often talks on his MySpace page that he’d love to wipe white, straight men off the planet.
One night at a bar, Willy has a few too many drinks and gets in a fight, severely crippling a straight, white male. Hate crime?
Nope. Whitey just happened to be there at the wrong time. But with “hate crime” laws, Willy would be an easy target to say he did this out of hate when in reality, he just got drunk.
The problem with hate crime is that generally it’s easy to claim hate when you’re a protected class of citizen, even when it’s not true. Just like a woman can get a restraining order against a man by claiming he hit her when it never happened. There’s too much room for abuse of that kind of system.
Why not just punish people for their crimes instead? Threats are crimes, regardless of the reasoning.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:15 pm
At least you have the stones to admit you can’t read worth a damn and like to throw in strawmen to beat down.
I see a swastika on the side of a Jew’s house as a threat. I don’t see why the Jew gets special treatment over, say, me if my ex-lover scrawls obscenities on my house. A threat is a threat is a threat. Threats against whites, men, or straights are just as bad as those against blacks, gays, or short Chinese circus clowns with goiters. The fact that I don’t discern between them is logical – all threats against someone without cause are bad. I don’t need special laws to make it more bad.
Plus vandalism. That’s a separate crime.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:33 pm
Even in your gross oversimplification, you forgot: hate without assault — 0 years.
So? To move it into a less charged area, I can’t be given a ticket for not wearing my seat-belt alone, only if I’ve been pulled over for some other offense. That doesn’t make the non-wearing of seat belts not a crime. It’s just a tack-on crime.
So to move it back on topic, Hate-crime is a thought-crime, you are just OK with it because it’s a tack-on crime to some other offense.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:45 pm
And there it is right there. You just went down the slope with that one statement. Apparently “hate without assault” is something criminal in your mind. I hate people like you. Wanna put me in jail?
July 31st, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Because, at the end of the day, what you’re asking us to do is pretend that spraypainting a swastika on the side of a Jew’s house is not the slightest bit different than spraypainting “Jack loves Jill” there.
Not at all.
Spraypainting “Jack Loves Jill” on someone’s house is vandalism. The perpetrator should be charges with vandalism.
Spraypainting a swastika on a Jew’s house is vandalism and Threatening. The perpetrator should be charged with vandalism *and* making threats.
This latter scenario, obviously, will incure more severe punishments as there are two crimes and not just one.
If you want to see what we really do consider equivalent it would be Robb’s other example:
Spraypainting “You’re Dead Bitch!” on an ex-lover’s house is the same as painting a swastika on a Jew’s house. Both are making threats of harm against another person and both should be prosecuted the same. Unless, that is, you think one person’s life is worth more than the other.
July 31st, 2008 at 5:51 pm
“Intent is what makes all the difference in the eyes of society and the law.”
Intent and motivation are far from the same thing. Intent refers to a desired outcome (she intended to kill someone) where motivation refers to the reason behind it (she intended to kill someone because she was pissed off about x).
But rarely does someone kill a person without hatred. It happens, as with a contract killer, so I guess the contract killer should be punished less? This debate is similar to the “gun crime” debate. We hate guns, so we’re going to punish gun crimes more severely. By that logic, brutally stabbing someone to death is less of a crime than shooting someone to death.
It diminished the very concept of justice.
Someone is murdered, and how many people are going to think; “Well, thank goodness it wasn’t motivated by hate. That would really have been bad.
Or; “Thank goodness the killer used a pair of scissors, ’cause a shooting would have been just unacceptable.”
Tgirsh; The article reads to me like a lot of psychobabble. It’s really not all that complicated if we stick to the basic principle that people have a right not be physically attacked, no matter the “reason” unless it is in self defense. Further, judges have always had some lattitude in sentencing for most crimes, depending on their understanding of the circumstances.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:10 pm
For that matter, tgirsch’s statement that hate crime is not thought crime is wrong as well. There have been prosecutions and or punishments for thought under the hate crimes legislation, when no act or reference to the allegedly hated party was made.
I don’t have any examples at my fingertips, right this minute, but there has been news coverage of just such happening.
But they shouldn’t be too hard to find for someone who is interested.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:15 pm
Here’s another scenario. When I was young, punk was really, really big. We scrawled the anarchy symbol on everything (you know, circle A). We didn’t really know what we were talking about, we just thought “no rules! COOL!”.
So, some punk, just being a punk, sprays a swastika on Mr. Goldstein’s house. The occupant happens to be a Jew. Punk has been educated in the liberal utopia school system and really has no idea what the swastika really means, he just knows it’s a ‘bad’ thing. Punk gets caught. Hate crime? No, nothing of the sort. But in tgirsch-land, Punk gets an extra 5 years.
I guess that whole “Justice is Blind” thing is overrated. Lady Justice should take off the blindfold and make sure she stares extra hard!
July 31st, 2008 at 6:19 pm
Spraypainting “You’re Dead Bitch!” on an ex-lover’s house is the same as painting a swastika on a Jew’s house. Both are making threats of harm against another person and both should be prosecuted the same.
I disagree. One is a threat against an individual, while the other is a threat against an entire class or group of people. If one accepted your logic here, then there’s no difference between hating Terrell Owens and hating black people as a group.
The difference becomes even more stark when you’re talking about a group or class of people with a long history of being targeted for discrimination, acts of intimidation, acts of violence, etc. Your view is that we should naively ignore that history and pretend that such things simply don’t happen. That seems silly to me.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:24 pm
Robb:
I don’t know why you insist on erecting such strawmen. Unless it can be demonstrated, beyond a reasonable doubt, that this is not just a case of “a punk being a punk,” there’s no extra punishment. As with homicide, theft, or any of a myriad of other crimes, being able to demonstrate that the perp knew exactly what he was doing is relevant, and rightly so. Why you people think only in extremes, and choose to ignore vast shades of gray, is completely beyond me. Of course, if you can point to somebody arguing that any crime committed against a protected group must always and unconditionally be viewed as a hate crime, maybe you’d have a point. But nobody has said anything of the sort, have they?
Only a very small percentage of crimes — of any sort — can reasonably be construed as hate crimes, but that doesn’t mean that such crimes don’t exist, or that they shouldn’t be treated differently. But hey, looking the other way has looked so well for so long, why change now? Much easier to pretend that motives don’t exist, are irrelevant, and matter not at all. Anything less obvious than a direct punch to the face is no crime at all, it would seem. We must throw up our hands, powerless to stop those who would intimidate others, apparently, other than to pretend that group intimidation is no different than a simple robbery.
Similarly, since we can’t “read minds,” we should treat the guy who fills his gas tank and absent-mindedly forgets to pay no differently at all than someone who intentionally steals gas. Punish the action without trying to divine the reasons. Sorry, but I don’t buy it. It flies in the face of our entire criminal justice system.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:34 pm
The jury sees a Jewish man with a swastika on his door, and a drunken kid dressed like a punk. Tell me where your reasonable doubt would be, if you want, but I’m nowhere near that optimistic as to think it was motivated purely or primarily as a drunken bender on just the kid’s word.
And I can’t see that as much of a strawman; I know personally of something similar that happened involving a gay kid in a high school (in Massachusetts, of all things, and done by a GLTQ group member). She hated him, but the actual vandalism wasn’t motivated by sexual orientation biases. Of course, it took a few days before that particular aspect got caught up, with the middle space filled with motivated op-ed writers Sure Of Evil. I’m doubtful that, in a less clear example, the school or the local courts would have known the difference.
That may not really matter. You had to be a criminal anyway, so what’s a bit of extra punishment? Still, I understand a lot of people do not like that viewpoint.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:49 pm
Hey, if you’ve got a better idea (one that will actually, you know, work), I’m all ears. Seems to me, however, that when the shoe’s on the other foot, and people suggest that we treat terrorism no differently than any other crime, there’s a lot of griping from many of the same people who gripe in the other direction here.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. I don’t see why it’s any different for us to say we ought to recognize the difference between a flaming bag of poo and burning cross, and treat them differently, than it is for us to say we ought to recognize the difference between getting into a bar fight and beating the crap out of this fag to send a message to all the other fags, and treat that differently, too.
Some death penalty advocates say that public executions would be more effective. Why? Because of the message that they send. But in the world of crime, we’re supposed to ignore the message? I don’t get it.
July 31st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
what language are you reading in, that renders “0 years [of punishment]” as “it’s criminal”?
no, but i’d like it if somebody could teach you english. am i still hateful if i want to put you through school?
July 31st, 2008 at 7:30 pm
Because the former case has some rather obvious differences. Even after a few days, a burning bag of dog poo is chemically and physically different from a burning cross. Physically and on any chemical scale we can reasonably observe, there’s no difference between “getting into a bar fight and beating the crap out of this fag to send a message to all the other fags” and “getting into a bar fight and beating the crap out of this fag to get his wallet”.
I mean, I guess we could start punching long needles into the asshole’s brain a few weeks in the past and see how the neurons fire during the crime, but that’s probably not going to pass Constitutional muster.
That means that, in practice, we have to guess from previous behavior and hope that the juries get it right. That’s not bad, on its own, and not that different from far too many laws, albeit taking a different path than most other laws. But I really doubt that the average jury is going to stick to judging “fighting words” and that every case will be cut and dry.
That might be an acceptable. It’s a matter of opinion. But it’s not an illogical concern.
Ignoring for now the logical fallacies of “other people say X, you say something like notX, explain” and “message=motivation”, I think I can firmly expect an explicit message broadcasted live in several languages and closed captioning to be slightly easier to divine than figuring out the internal motivations of a criminal days, weeks, or months after they committed a crime, while said criminal has every reason to hide them.
Having remotely effective police officers, legal systems that actually enforce the law on the books rather than coddle and early release criminals, and encourage training in lawful self-defense and defense-of-others and citizen’s arrests by individuals statistically likely to be victimized?
I know, I know, pipe dream.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:34 pm
tgirsch-
Since what bothers me most are disparately treated murders, assaults, etc and the examples you use relate to vandalism hate, would you agree that hate crime legislation should be limited to vandalism-type hate?
I wouldn’t agree with it from my perspective, because I don’t accept the assertion that hate should be the basis for augmented sentences.
When I went to CBHS (for a while, at least), the boys from MUS used to yell “Eat Fish!” at us. So what?
That reception beat having our bus bricked by the people at Bolton HS.
July 31st, 2008 at 7:50 pm
I have the ability to hate just by being human. If I hate an individual or a class of individuals there is no difference. If I am to punish for hating but without me committing action then that is a thought crime.
If I commit a murder because of hate to a class of (church going, liberal, gay loving) people, I should be punished for the murder. My motivation is really immaterial to the crime in that case. It is not revenge for a wrong done me except maybe in my imagination. The punishment for murder is death; any additional punishment for the hate is ridiculous.
Hate crimes are a ridiculous concept. Punish the actual crime not the thought. I really do not see the difference from painting a swastika and the anarchy sign or any other vandalism. Prosecute the vandalism. The action. Any crime can be used to intimidate, hell read several blogs and the hate that emanate is palpable and designed to intimidate. But I would not want any of those vicious people prosecuted for the verbal, written intimidation and hate.
Also many people have been punished on college campuses for allege hate /thought crimes read FIRE website for examples. The Canadian Human Rights is using the hate crimes to shut down discussion so I see a lot of good reasons to be against hate crimes legislation.
July 31st, 2008 at 8:07 pm
The Canadian Human Rights Commission prosecutes for “hate without assault,” as Mark Steyn and MacLeans magazine learned recently. The slippery slope is alive and well just north of the US border, in a supposedly civil society.
Regarding the difference between terrorism and crime, crime is meant to benefit the criminal financially; terrorism is meant to benefit the terrorists’ cause politically. Terrorism against citizens of a nation-state is an act of war, and a matter for the military to resolve. Crime against citizens of a nation-state is resolvable using the local, state or federal criminal justice systems.
Islamic terrorists are fighting a guerrilla war, not just committing criminal acts. It is not their “hate” that we prosecute, it is their stated goal of conquering our nation-state that we militarily fight against.
I find it interesting that there is a confluence of hate crime legislation and anti-terror military action, in that I can oppose motive-based penalty enhancement as an issue of freedom of conscience (for criminals), but I can also agree to allow the military to subjugate the worldwide Islamist movement as another issue of freedom of conscience (mine).
July 31st, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Yes, I think that a swastika on a Jew’s house deserves no more punishment than a threat to an individual. I think a woman on the corner threatening to kill all the White people is guilty of the same thing as a woman at a restaurant threatening to kill all the people eating the fish. Threats are illegal.
I’ll say it again since you are having a hard time understanding it. A flaming bag of poo does not imply a threat. A flaming cross can (not necessarily). Any threat, even if towards a group of people, is a threat and should be dealt with accordingly. The group is irrelevant.
I just want you to agree or disagree with the following statement -
Agree with it, and you cannot agree that hate crime makes sense since it will give certain groups MORE protection than others.
Disagree with it, and I can dismiss you as a racist / bigot / sexist. I want equality, you want special treatment. Why is that so hard to understand?
And to burn your next strawman, I don’t want to protect the Nazi scum. I want him punished for threatening someone, regardless if it’s a Jew or a Muslim.
July 31st, 2008 at 9:01 pm
His viewpoint, if I understand it, is that you’re not protecting every other Jewish individual in the area from the hate crime, which is targeted toward them as well.
And, in all honesty, hate crime statutes don’t protect one group more than others. The statutes only reference crimes motivated by race, religion, disability, et cetera; they don’t (and under the Constitution, can’t) protect only one side of a specific grouping method. They do punish threats motivated by certain things more than others, but the sexuality one goes whether you were beaten up for being gay or beaten up for being straight (or beaten up because someone guessed your sexuality wrong).
In practice, I’m not so sure of that’s the case, especially since the only numbers I can pull up are for federal reporting laws rather than state sentencing laws, but that sounds like a better argument for better police and legal folk than for or against the law.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Have y’all read this? It’s very short, direct, and to the point:
http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/crim/241fin.htm
It’s a product of the civil rights movement in the 1960s, IIRC, and even it is redundant to the constitution and to whole libraries of state law.
Still want more laws upon laws upon laws? Still want the logical equivalent of “outlawing crime”? Then, when crime continues, you want to outlaw illegal crime, and then outlaw prohibited, illegal crime?
July 31st, 2008 at 10:34 pm
Robb:
Try wrapping your head around the underlying principle, first:
That much is basic crim law. The only real controversy here is (or should be, anyway) whether hate should be considered an aggravating circumstance.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:45 pm
Well, that’s true if we’re fucking morons incapable of basic reason. Especially if, for example, said fag’s wallet wasn’t taken. But hey, let’s just pretend that it’s all voodoo, and we can’t have any idea why anybody ever does anything. At which point we’re simply powerless to even differentiate between intentional and accidental.
July 31st, 2008 at 10:46 pm
I know, I know, pipe dream.
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of “vigilante justice,” but I guess “pipe dream” works, too…
July 31st, 2008 at 11:11 pm
The defendant claims he heard sirens, or got spooked.
Or took his wallet afterwards. Cause, you know, hate crimes never result in theft afterward.
But thanks for the vulgarity.
Yeah, we all know encouraging police officers to enforce the law, and for folk to protect themselves within the extent allowed by the law, that’s “vigilante justice.” Yep.
July 31st, 2008 at 11:29 pm
Robb:
I just want you to agree or disagree with the following statement -
I agree with it.
Agree with it, and you cannot agree that hate crime makes sense since it will give certain groups MORE protection than others.
Bzzt. Wrong answer. ANY group that is specifically targeted for intimidation by another individual or group should be so protected. It just so happens that in practice, certain groups are targeted in this way far more often than others. So it’s not that some groups are more deserving of protection than others, it’s that these groups are more in need of such protection. It’s why the president gets armed security when the average Joe doesn’t — it’s not that the president is more deserving of such protection, but rather that he’s more likely to be attacked.
So it goes for hate crimes. And if some group should emerge specifically targeting WASP males for violence and/or other intimidation, they should be prosecuted under hate crime legislation to the fullest extent of the law, and to the same extent as any such group that targets non-whites. (In fact, if history tells us anything, it’s that such a group would be punished by far and away more severely.)
I don’t want to protect the Nazi scum.
Not at all. But you would enforce a legal standard that would hold Henry II blameless for the murder of Thomas Becket. After all, the King didn’t do anything. He didn’t threaten anyone. He didn’t specifically ask anyone to do anything at all. No action, no explicit threat, no crime, right?
gattsuru:
The defendant claims he heard sirens, or got spooked.
Or took his wallet afterwards. Cause, you know, hate crimes never result in theft afterward.
All the sorts of things that could be fleshed out before a Grand Jury and at trial, no? See, when the prosecutor decides to charge the perp not just with assault, but with a hate crime, said prosecutor is seeking a more severe charge with a more stringent burden of proof. So s/he’s taking a risk, unless s/he’s pretty sure s/he’s got a good case on that.
But, of course, if you ascribe to the “let’s let people unconditionally get away with all manner of shit because we’re deathly afraid of slippery slopes” school of jurisprudence, I suppose that’s your prerogative.
But thanks for the vulgarity.
People who can’t handle occasional cursing can go fuck themselves.
Yeah, we all know encouraging police officers to enforce the law, and for folk to protect themselves within the extent allowed by the law, that’s “vigilante justice.”
Well, the whole “citizens’ arrest” thing is what tripped the vigilante justice switch in my mind, but whatever.
August 1st, 2008 at 12:45 am
gatt, the police are paid to do full time as a job what it is the duty of all others to do when confronted with criminality. They are not the ONLY ONES allowed to stop crime or detain criminals. Though, they say they are and though that is the politically correct stance it is not true.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:22 am
At least in Ohio, the matter is a separate charge; you can argue hate crime vandalism and just get vandalism. Please don’t tell me you’re so optimistic as to believe that an additional charge that makes any degree of questioning on-topic isn’t tossed around often.
After all, it’s not like they would be convicted of other crimes more easily, according to what you say. We’d be letting people off scot free without these hate crime statutes that don’t make previously legal acts illegal.
And, hey, it’s not like a country with a similar legal code, constitutional protections, and demographics could possibly be a good canary in a coal shaft on a legal matter. For my next joke, I must be planning to suggest that past events are a predictor, even an unreliable one, of future events in the same circumstances! Crazy!
It’s still within existing legal codes, often explicitly. It still involves normal judicial oversight.
So, does “vigilante justice” actually mean the dictionary definition of “taking the law into one’s own hands”, or do you just replace the word with “legal actions tgirsch doesn’t like”?
August 1st, 2008 at 9:37 am
Yu-Ain Gonnano: I was trying to point out to mariner that when he said “Punish criminals for what they do, and don’t worry about what they think.”, it wasn’t reflected in the non-controversial area of intent. Motive is another example of “what they think”, and I did not intend to conflate the two, rather, to imply they are of a similar nature not evident in simply “what they do”.
Robb Allen: Actually, hate appears to have been a, if not the motive for the Beltway Snipers, we just didn’t know it for a long while. (“We” as in I was living in Arlington, VA then, and that was “my” Home Depot at which the FBI worker was shot. Not a fun time.)
straightarrow: For “pure hate” prosecutions in the US, check out the one in Idaho. Wife is taking pictures of a soccer match (she may do this for the local media), black (African?) coach very unreasonably objects and assaults her. Husband gets no where near the two in the crowd, but is understandably loose with his language. He’s prosecuted, every courtesy is extended to the coach, including not prosecuting him for an assault in front of a bunch of witnesses.
The powers that be in Idaho are so sensitive about its image as a haven for white supremacists/separatists that, well, I’m not sure I’d want to live there.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:40 am
tgirsch, I get the impression that you do not agree with the statement made that hate without assault = 0 years. If you truly believe that hate alone is a punishable crime, then you have de facto stated that you believe in policing people’s thoughts. Anyone who claims they don’t hate a certain type or class of person is lying to themselves. It’s human nature to fear and hate the “other”. We work hard to suppress that hate, and for most of us it is not a problem to suppress any urge to act on that hate, but it is there. If hate without action is a punishable crime, then anyone can be punished at the whim of the government. “Atlas Shrugged” hit that nail on the head.
Tacking on extra punishment for hate is a short step from punishing the hate alone. Not liking how someone feels about others is no justification for punishment. Our justice system was built on the idea of penalizing illegal actions. Judges and juries are brought in to look at each case, and this has worked for over 200 years as a method of determining the correct punishment, based on circumstances. The murderer who killed because of pure malice will likely get a more severe punishment than the one who killed his wife’s lover when he came home early. Thankfully, the law is not yet on the “Zero Tolerance” bandwagon.
I say again, tacking on extra punishment for “hate crime” status diminishes similar crimes against victims that were not motivated by hate. Motive is used to prove guilt, not to determine the punishment. If hate without assault = punishment, we had all better lawyer up.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:46 am
Mike M:
tgirsch, I get the impression that you do not agree with the statement made that hate without assault = 0 years. If you truly believe that hate alone is a punishable crime, then you have de facto stated that you believe in policing people’s thoughts.
I don’t know where you’d get that impression, because I’ve been pretty consistent in stating that hate, in and of itself, is not a crime. So have the people I’ve linked. We’re not advocating for punishing thoughts or opinions, we’re advocating for punishing criminal actions taken. We’re simply advocating that when such criminal actions are taken, we shouldn’t ignore the circumstances under which they occurred, nor should we ignore the broader impacts of those actions.
Tacking on extra punishment for hate is a short step from punishing the hate alone.
See Xrlq’s “aggravating circumstance” comment, above.
I say again, tacking on extra punishment for “hate crime” status diminishes similar crimes against victims that were not motivated by hate. Motive is used to prove guilt, not to determine the punishment. If hate without assault = punishment, we had all better lawyer up.
You’re ignoring intent. The only difference between murder and manslaughter is intent. If we can draw a distinction there, why not also in the case of hate crimes?
If hate without assault = punishment, we had all better lawyer up.
You spend a lot of time on the “hate without other crime = crime in and of itself” idea. Too bad absolutely nobody is arguing this point. It’s a lovely straw man, but that’s all it is.
August 1st, 2008 at 10:51 am
The big problem, as I see it, with hate crime legislation is that (barring an admission by the perpetrator) there is virtually no way to know what the motivation is. IF hate crime laws were only outlawing those acts that were intended to target an entire class of people for further illegal actions against them (along the lines of “inciting a riot” laws) AND it could be shown that that was the actual intent of the act, then and only then would they be useful and reasonable.
Unfortunately, the way they are currently written/enforced makes something as “innocent” as using a particular slur over another one when you are leading up to a fight, as you’re trying to intimidate or insult the other guy, into a Hate Crime instead of just the crime of picking a fight.
If I’m mugging or carjacking someone and want to scare them into giving me what I want, I can call them anything I want without it adding onto my sentence, unless I happen to use an expression that involves their race, gender, sexual preference, age, religion, or whatnot. Then I get extra time. Was the crime motivated by hate? No. Was hate a factor in whether or not I committed it or who I chose as a victim? No. Do I get an additional punishment because it’s a Hate Crime? Yes.
That’s just not right.
Take the oft discussed here example of painting a swastika on the side of a Jew’s house. Is that a threat? Could it just be my way of expressing my perception of my pure Aryan race’s superiority over Jews? Perhaps I’m a Navajo painting it up there as a sign of healing because my good friend, the resident Jew, was sick. Even if I hate Jews, painting a swastika on a Jew’s house does not necessarily mean that I want people to do anything illegal to Jews. It could just be my way of expressing my hatred, and should be treated as no different than if I had painted any other graffiti on the house.
IF you could prove that I was doing it as an act of terrorism, then fine, go after me for that. If you can’t, though, then it should not have any additional punishment associated with it.
And if you think that thought crime will never happen here, I’ve got a little treat for you. In SC, it is illegal to do something that you think is illegal even if it isn’t.
Did you get that? You are guilty of committing a crime if you did something that was not against the law, if you THOUGHT it was against the law when you did it. According to this law, if you didn’t see the sign raising the speed limit to 70mph and you were doing 70mph, you could be charged with violating the law. Imagine the scenario: you’re in a 70mph zone and get pulled over because you’ve got a tail light out. You blurt out that you are sorry that you were doing 70 in a 60 zone, but that you were in a real hurry to get to the airport to catch a flight. You could be arrested for violating the “I thought I was doing something illegal” law. Even though you were not exceeding the speed limit.
For those that are wondering, we have that law because some sick perv got caught trying to hook up with a minor online. When he went to what he thought was the young girl’s house, it was an undercover cop living there pretending to be a minor online. Since the law said that it was against the law to do such things to a minor, and the person he had been communicating with was not actually a minor, he got acquitted.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:25 am
Harold–thanks for the example.
I was looking for a good way to differentiate between hate crimes as described in theory and hate crimes as prosecuted in practice.
I don’t know what my response is, but I see several choices.
(a) agree that hate crime laws may be good in theory, but a slippery slope in practice, and should be discouraged in general
(b) agree that hate crimes laws are good in theory, and generally applied well
(c) disagree that the law should pay a high level of attention to the group which the target of the crime belongs to, and promote prosecution of the individual crime (thus disagreeing with hate crime laws in principle)
(d) wonder why the heck hate crimes are such a big issue
I notice that not many have responded to my challenge above.
Under the current definitions of hate crimes (as described and enumerated by the FBI), incidences are fairly rare. Large numbers of jurisdictions report no incidence of hate crimes in the average year, and the reported numbers show a rate approximately 1% the rate of generic violent crime.
Whether or not we need a special law, don’t these numbers show that hate crimes are the outlier, the rare event?
Admittedly, they get lots of attention in the press. (If it bleeds it leeds; if it is unusual, it is sensational.) However, do they deserve the attention paid to them in law, policy, and the press?
August 1st, 2008 at 11:51 am
If one accepted your logic here, then there’s no difference between hating Terrell Owens and hating black people as a group.
Not exactly. There is a difference. I just believe there should be no *legal* difference as hate shouldn’t be illegal whether it’s for an individual or a group.
Secondly, if you want to follow your logic that the threat is a threat against more than just the individual, it seems that the logical answer would be to charge the perpetrator with multiple counts, one for each person who can reasonably be expected to have been threatened. For example, there are 10 Jewish people living in the neighborhood where the swastika was painted, charge the perp with 10 counts of threatening.
August 1st, 2008 at 11:54 am
Harold, I would say that “intent” in the legal definition isn’t an example of “what they think” but rather “what they attempt”. What is attempted is a “what they do” and not a “what they think”.
August 1st, 2008 at 2:07 pm
The one strawman I keep seeing is the misdirection provided by the “intent is used to determine which charges apply, so hate crime prosecution is ok.” (Very loosely paraphrased.)
That position is inherently flawed. Determination of intent is rightfully done to make a decision on appropriate charges to be levied. If one hits and kills a pedestrian with his car accidentally, manslaughter. If done because the driver was changing his cd’s and not looking where he was going, perhaps negligent homicide. If done on purpose, murder. Hence, determination of intent has a rightful place in the process. No one can successfully argue that.
A case in point is the dragging death of Mr. Bird (Byrd?) in Jarrell, Tx. The proper charges were brought, conviction obtained, death sentences applied.
If we somehow divined that they killed Mr. Bird because he was black or retarded and called it a hate crime, what would we do? Execute them twice?
There were calls and protests for the imposition of a hate crime law in Texas following this trial. Why? The mechanism of determining the intent of the killers and charging them with pre-meditated murder was sufficient to achieve as close to justice as we can get.
Why would we dilute the seriousness of this crime with a politically correct charge that robs every citizen of the country of his right to an opinion, no matter how pure or obscene. The actions should be the determining factor in punishment when the proper charges are levied.
The rest is just posing for the crowd. And a dangerous pose it is.
The misdirection comes when some here try to equate determination of intent prior to levying of charges to prosecution and/or added punishment because of thought or perceived thought. The selection of charges is a sufficient mechanism for determining the proper punishment should a conviction be obtained.
August 1st, 2008 at 9:57 pm
So, you’re saying the exact same thing I’m saying. Threaten a group or individual – get punished. Perfect!
The fact that it will help Jews, Blacks, Whites, Lounge Singers with Rosacea is a bonus. No need to single anything out.
As long as you do not predefine any specific groups, I’m cool with it. But I don’t think that’s what you’re after. You seem to want to have laws that state threats against Groups X, Y, and Z carry more penalty than groups A & B. I see no difference between that and giving special water fountain privileges to the same groups.
August 2nd, 2008 at 12:53 am
Robb:
Actually, I think we’re pretty close to being on the same page. I don’t think any particular group should be exempt from hate crime protection. At the same time, like it or not, we’re a lot better at recognizing hate crimes against certain groups, because there’s a long history of such crimes against those groups. That makes them easier to identify, but it doesn’t make less-publicized hate crimes less worthy of the same sort of protection.
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:06 pm
Hey man, as long as everyone benefits equally from it, I have no problems. But I still think that threats are threats and there’s no need to confuse the issue with calling it a “hate” crime. I mean really, how many crimes happen out of pure love?
August 2nd, 2008 at 7:09 pm
I don’t know, when it comes to language, I say call it what it is. When you have crimes that are motivated by bigotry, and targeted against certain groups of people because of their race/religion/whatever, then why not call a duck a duck? Why pussyfoot around and say it’s “just” a threat no different than any other? Even when you include all groups, as I suggest we should, you’re still talking about a difference in kind when you’re talking about threats against individuals, versus threats against entire groups or classes of people. Call it what it is, I say.
August 3rd, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I think every state with a death penalty should remove financial gain from the list of special circumstances that qualify for it. Then again, even states that don’t have the death penalty, still need to clean up their law books to make sure that crimes motivated by financial gain are not punished any more harshly than the same crimes would be without that motive. After all, financial gain is not a crime, so how can financial gain + crime > crime?
While we’re at it, let’s get rid of laws against bribery and prostitution, both of which rest on the shaky premise that legal act + legal act = crime.
August 3rd, 2008 at 3:05 pm
Or make that legal act + legal act + legal act = crime, as the quid and the quo for bribery and prostitution aren’t crimes even if they co-occur, unless the “pro” can also be proven. The basic point stands, though, as trading stuff for other stuff isn’t generally a crime, either.