Should it? The white American journalist John Conroy, writing about having been mugged by an African American, explains the theory behind hate crime laws: "that the impact of the underlying crime is far greater—that many more people are affected than just the targeted victim." However, he argues:
Why is a racist thug more dangerous than the man who just feels like beating someone—anyone—up? The racist might send a message to a large population, but the nonracist sends a message to an even larger group, a message that says, “You count for nothing” and “No one is safe.”I think he's right.
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*Homicide is a special case. Homicides will count as murder, rather than just manslaughter, if there is a "base motivation" for the act. Racism usually counts as a base motivation, but so does greed, for example. In the case of other offenses, the motivation will be taken to account in the sentencing decision if the accused is found guilty.
4 comments:
I don't quite agree.
If a hate crime sends a message, it is not simply the message "I, the criminal, will attack members of your group." Rather, it is the message, "I and other members of my group will attack members of your group." So the man who attacked John Conroy may have wanted to send the message, not only that he would attack whites who ventured into that part of Chicago, but that the other African-American residents of the neighborhood would also be likely to commit such attacks. I don't believe that message is true- race relations in Chicago aren't really so bad as that. But I think that is the message a hate crime is meant to send.
By the way, I do not think that hate crimes laws are a very good idea. Hate crimes laws give prosecutors more options to choose from as they decide how to handle a case. In a modern society like those of western Europe or North America, prosecutors form a sizeable class, a class that arises from society at large and responds to political pressures from society at large. If there is racism anywhere in society, then, we can expect it to manifest itself in the way prosecutors as a class use their power. And indeed, crime reports from the USA and other countries where hate crimes laws have been in operation for some time show that the people most likely to be jailed for hate crimes are precisely those minority groups whom hate crimes laws are supposed to protect.
If I understand you correctly, you're arguing that a hate crime changes the potential victims' subjective probability of being attacked by more than does a non-hate-crime. I'm not sure that is true, but I might have to think about it a little more.
Indeed, hate crime laws, like laws against drug use, open the door for discretionary behaviour by the criminal justice system. However, I was under the impression that in the USA a white person attacking a black person is more likely to be charged with a hate crime (which would contradict your statement that "the people most likely to be jailed for hate crimes are precisely those minority groups whom hate crimes laws are supposed to protect"). But I can't cite anything in support of that, so I may simply be wrong.
"I was under the impression that in the USA a white person attacking a black person is more likely to be charged with a hate crime"- Indeed not. The US Federal Bureau of Investigation has been tracking hate crimes prosecutions since 1990. The FBI's raw data is available here:
http://www.fbi.gov/ucr/ucr.htm#hate
I've only looked around the 2007 stats a bit, but the frequencies by race given there don't really answer the question, it seems to me.
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