Do you think there should be hate crime laws?

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No hate crime or hate speech laws, period.
What's next after that, "hate thought" based on other actions or speech that would indicate hateful thoughts?
Too Orwellian.....

Hmm hate thought huh sounds like a fallcy waiting to happen.

In Ender's shadow some people have those. The reasoning- otherwise they would have to be locked up in a prison for the rest of their life or executed. I know it is a scifi book so not very realistic. Had to do with human genetics experimentation

The Canadian law is unjust. It is one thing to stir up a lynch mob or foment a riot. It is another thing to express an opinion. The Canadian law makes the mere expression of certain opinions illegal. This is bad. This is unjust. Think about it. Pleasant or popular speech/expression does not need protection. It is unpopular or unpleasant expression that must be guarded.

ruveyn

I agree it is unjust. Just to clarify: I was merely stating the fact that there is such a law, I never implied it is just, quite the contrary in fact.

I think that hate crime is a good concept. A lot of you seem to be saying that it can be difficult to know whether a crime is a hate crime. I agree, but that's not the point. The point is: if for some reason you are certain that a crime was a hate crime, does it deserve a more severe response?

I think that the answer is obviously "yes". Motive matters. If a criminal is mentally impaired, then the crime is not so terrible. If the criminal is fueled by bigotry, then the crime is more terrible. A lot of you are saying "a crime is a crime". That's nonsense! Are you saying that there should be no distinction between manslaughter and premeditated murder?

Why is a crime motivated by "hate" worse than a crime motivated by greed, anger or uncontrolled sexual lust?. Any wrongful act producing property damage, injury or death is actionable. Why tack on "hate" when doing a wrongful act intentionally is already a crime? The element that makes a wrong doing criminally punishable is mens rea (evil intent). That is sufficient. Adding the element of racial or religious bigotry is unnecessary. We already know the difference between right and wrong. Adding the element of bigotry to a wrongful act does not make it any more wrong.

ruveyn

I don't get why motivation matters at all quite frankly, furthermore you can never be certain that a hate crime was a hate crime you can only have strong indications that something was a hate crime. Even if you have a guy with a swastika on his chest who beat the crap out a minority who was trying to steal the guy with the swastikas car, you can't be sure if it was a hate crime or someone being pissed about another person trying to steal their property.

No, crimes committed because of gender, sexuality, ethnic background or whatever else is not more severe than crimes committed for other reasons and punishing them is in fact legislating taste.

I think that establishing the fact that there is a motive matters. It makes the line between accidentally killing somebody through your own wrong action (manslaughter, negligent homicide, vehicular homicide) and killing them intentionally (murder). But once it's been established that there is a motive- an intention- then it shouldn't matter whether that motive is hate of the person's group, hate of that specific individual, money, gang initiation, to cover up another crime or whatever. The only exception is the motive of defense, as being discussed in the Martin/Zimmerman shooting case.

Currently with hate laws there is a sort of reverse of the acceptability of defense motive. Just as defense is an acceptable motive (and so it must be established in Martin/Zimmerman if defense actually applies), hate of a group is considered an even worse motive than any other motive and gets punished more harshly. I don't think that is fair (although it's currently legal). It robs the victims of un-hate motivated crimes of their justice. It makes their victimization somehow less worthy of punishment because they don't belong to a group the perpetrator hated.

Currently there is talk of charging Zimmerman with a hate crime based on a possible racial slur he muttered while still on the line to the 911 dispatcher (it's hard to tell exactly, it's up in the air and presumably the FBI will analyze that since they are now involved). I think this is the wrong approach (even though the currently legal one). A racial slur can be one of the pieces of evidence that Zimmerman was not truly acting in self defense. But I don't think it should change the charge. If Martin and Zimmerman were the same race but everything else happened exactly the same, I think Martin should still be charged with either manslaughter or murder (whichever fits all the evidence that will eventually come out). I don't think he's more guilty if it turns out he hates all black people. I think his guilt or innocence ought to rest entirely on whether this really was a case of self defense or not, not on whether he hated all black people.




I very much disagree. The crime is just as terrible if the person is mentally impaired. The victim has been just as victimized. What gets taken into account is not whether the crime is more or less terrible, but whether the perpetrator was capable of even realizing he was committing a crime- is he legally competent or not. It isn't the motive they are judging but mental competence.





I disagree. To the victim, the crime is equally terrible whether it was done out of group hate, personal hate, boredom or for money. The law ought to recognize that even if it currently doesn't and prosecutes a crime done for money less harshly than a crime done for group hate.




When you distinguish between manslaughter and premeditated murder, you are distinguishing between accidental killing and intentional killing. That isn't the same as distinguishing between different types of motives. (Except in the case when the motive is defense.)

Hate crime laws put the offender on the defensive. If I tried to prosecute my Boss as a hate criminal for firing me because I was autistic my Boss would think of a million reasons that he fired me that had nothing to do with my autism.

Because it's motivated by, and targeted towards, not just the victim but anyone like the victim. It's a crime against an entire community, not just one person.

The f*****g human rights tribunals... if there is any thing in this country that deserves to be targeted by terrorists, it's those ruddy human rights tribunals.

"Free speech? BUT HE'S OFFENDED GO TO JAIL AND PAY HIM A FORTUNE!"

f*****g ridiculous.

An angry Canadian? If so, there is hope.

You guys should have joined with the 13 colonies when they rebelled against the Crown.

ruveyn

Lets put it this way.

1. If a crime is motivated by rasism it should be punished more harshly
2. If the crime is motivated by greed it should be punished more harshly
3. If the crime is motivated by lust it should be punished more harshly
4 -- 90. The crimes motivated by (insert the 86 item list here) should be punished more harshly

So as we go through that list, we will cover 90% of the crimes. I mean 90% of the crimes are motivated by SOMETHING and that something has to be a STRONG motivation, in fact strong enough to outweigh the fear of going to jail. In other words, we are punishing 90% of the crimes "more severely" than the remaining 10%. So racist crimes fall within 90%. Fair enough. But they would not be punished any more severely than any other crime within that 90%.

Now, what are the 10% that we didn't cover? That would be the cases where criminals are mentally impaired. Thus, their motive was "weak", but they acted on that "weak" motive anyway because they were unable to recognize the full negative impact of what they did. Thus, "punishing 90% more severely" equals to "punishing mentally impaired less severely". As long as we do that, we don't have to set any priorities within 90%; all of the crimes within 90% are equally bad.

Last edited by Roman on 26 Mar 2012, 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The same can be said about other crimes. A crime motivated by lust is a statement "women are merely a sex objects of men", thus it is against all women rather than just one woman. A crime motivated by greed is a statement "rich people have no need and they are obligated to help the poor, if they don't want to, they should be forced to". Again, this is against the entire group.

On a different note, if the racist is going to hurt someone because they are black, then the PHYSICAL damage is not against the entire group, only against one person who was black. The PSYCHOLOGICAL damage is what affects entire group. But if we are to worry about psychological damage, we would be forced to be consistent and introduce hate SPEECH laws as well. But, as others pointed out, this would lead to violations of free speech and so forth. On the other hand, if we are to allow the freedom of consciousness, we have to de-criminalize the whole concept of "psychological damage". Now since the PHYSICAL damage of the hate crime is committed against one person, this means that the argument that "it is against the entire group" does not fly.

What is terrorism? Just a fancy word for political or religious violence. Isnt it covered by murder or destruction of property? What about racketeering? It's a catch all phrase to say that someone is engaged in a range of coordinated illegal activity. Why not charge them for each individual crime? Why is it more serious to kill a cop or a judge than an average person? Murder is murder.

We have a range of laws that accomplish something similar to hate crime laws.