The Pros And Cons Of Hate Crime Legislation

We have all heard people use the phrase “adding insult to injury” as a way of describing a bad situation being made worse. With respect to hate crimes, this phrase fits all too well. After doing research on hate crime legislation, I have come to realize that this commonly used phrase constitutes an almost literal translation of the word “hate crime”, in the sense that crimes are made worse when criminals add hate to their offense. The US Congress has defined a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation.” While this definition may, at first glance, seem straightforward, I will demonstrate that hate

One such supporter, Michael Lieberman, attorney and representative of the Anti-Defamation League, illustrates some of the most compelling reasons in his article titled, “Hate Crime Laws: Punishment to Fit the Crime His first, and most obvious, is that many hate crimes would not even occur without personal bias. Accordingly, discouraging hate crimes by imposing harsher penalties for them should reduce crime rates in general. His second argument is that hate crimes can potentially cause public unrest and even riots, as seen very recently in Ferguson, Missouri. His third reason in support of hate crime legislation is that statistics show that hate crimes are more likely to involve violence. Lastly, hate crimes have significant impact on the victims and the communities that they belong

Therefore, defining hate crime policy must be very carefully and thoughtfully defined. Evidence of the ambiguity inherent in hate crime legislation can be found in chapter two of the book, Hate Crimes – Criminal Law & Identity Politics, by James H. Jacobs and Kimberly Potter. Jacobs and Potter Say who they are. argue that such ambiguity comes from a lack of consensus regarding the variables that make up hate crime ;how does one define prejudice, whose prejudices should be included in hate crime legislation, which crimes should be included, and what should the link between a motivating prejudice and criminal act look like. While defining all of these variables is critical to fair and effective hate crime legislation, I believe it is the last one that presents the greatest challenge. Although I think that lawmakers can eventually develop a good framework for hate crime legislation that addresses the first three variables, it can still be very difficult for authorities to establish a clear link between a criminal’s motivations and his or her