Our government is responsible for increasing our country’s safety against Hate crimes. Strengthening laws pertaining to Hate Crimes will decrease the number of Hate Crimes committed. One attempt at this was the establishment of the Hate Crimes Statistics Act, which “requires the Justice Department to acquire data on crimes which "manifest prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity" from law enforcement agencies across the country and to publish an annual summary of the findings.” Since the Hate Crime Statistics Act was created in 1990, the number of Hate crimes reported has consistently ranged around 7,500 or more annually. According to a new study by the Leadership Conference on Civil Right Education Fund, this approximates to at least one per hour. Therefore, it seems that for every Hate Crime that is occurring, there is another one being plotted. Although many fear that with stronger Hate Crime legislation anything can now be considered a Hate Crime, the establishment of stronger Hate Crime legislation will, more importantly, lead to a decrease in the crime rate.
Hate crimes target people of different race, religion, gender, sexual orientation (most recently changed to also include the transgender community) and even those who exhibit a disability. These crimes range from name calling and vandalizing, to murder. With the establishment of stricter laws, instances such as the murder of Matthew Sheppard, a student of the University of Wyoming, will be less likely to occur.
Crimes that result because of hatred or prejudice against others has been a reality for thousands of years, beginning as far back as the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (maybe even further), with the crimes committed against Native Americans by the Europeans and continuing on until today. Most of them stem off of religious and ethnic biases, especially those committed in the United States. According to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), however, the term Hate Crimes did not become a part of national vocabulary, specifically in the United States, until the 1980s, when emerging hate groups, like the Skinheads, began committing numerous bias-related crimes. The first recorded "Hate Crime" occurred in 1922 when the Federal Bureau of Investigation encountered a rising Ku Klux Klan, white supremacist movement in Louisiana. Two people were kidnapped, tortured and murdered while thousands more received threats. Although the term has recently been defined, world history has, in a sense, been defined by such crimes. From the Romans’ persecution of Christians; the Nazis’ “final solution” for the Jews and the “ethnic cleansing” in Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda to the hate crimes being committed today against gays, blacks, Jews and anyone else who doesn’t meet the attackers’ “approval”, these crimes pretty much been the foundation of history.
Since the 1980’s, the media has made the United States public more aware of Hate Crimes. Two specific tragedies initiated this heightened awareness. One was the shooting death (by a local KKK leader) of controversial radio talk show host Alan Berg in Denver, Colorado, in 1984 and two years later, the attack of three African-American men who were stuck in the white, supremacist area of Howard Beach after their car broke down. One of the men was even killed after he was chased in front of a speeding car. These cases, with the help of the media, are the reason hate crimes have been taken more seriously by State and National governments. Although many agree that hurting someone because of who they are is wrong, the current issue with hate crime legislation arises because of the ambiguity and differences in the definition of a hate crime.
The term “Hate Crime” began being used because it is broad enough to cover crimes committed not only against African Americans, but also against gays, Muslims, Koreans, and members of other various groups. The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 defines Hate Crimes as “crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, religion, sexual orientation, or ethnicity, including, where appropriate, the crimes of murder, non-negligent manslaughter, forcible rape, aggravated assault, simple assault, intimidation, arson, and destruction, damage or vandalism of property.” However, not all states adopted this definition. For example, some do not clearly tell which action can be considered a Hate Crime and some include disabled people and gender while others do not.
Many believe that Hate Crimes will continue to be committed because the action is based off of an existing hate that will never die out. However, even though there will still be the feelings of hate, knowing that there are major consequences to be faced inhibit the action. Many also feel that the laws will be “policing our thoughts”, being that our actions are based on our thoughts. However, there is a reason why many of us don’t act on our thoughts- because we know there will be consequences. Similarly, having to deal with more consequences will prevent hateful thoughts from being acted upon; therefore, making the “sacrifice” of having our thoughts exposed worth it. This policing of thoughts mostly comes in when distinguishing between a bias and non-bias related hate crime and although many believe that thoughts cannot truly be monitored, the actions themselves often tell you what the aggressor was thinking at the time; therefore, they can be monitored. Moreover, some also feel that Hate crime legislation will inhibit free speech. Legislation does not suppress free speech because the law is motivated by the desire to equalize a greater harm that is inflicted by bias-inspired thoughts, not by an attempt to suppress the expression of thoughts.
In an attempt to minimize this issue, “many jurisdictions have established hate-crime units in their police departments”, and some regional task forces are spending their time investigating hate crimes. Some States have increased law enforcement training on hate crime and utilize school- and community-based prevention programs and many nonprofit organizations, such as the Anti-Defamation League, have also helped with prevention programs, services to victims, and civil lawsuits filed on behalf of victims against hate-crime perpetrators. But this is not enough. New laws that cause the aggressor to witness the consequences of their actions need to be established.
In attempt to limit the increasing amount of Hate Crimes committed, the United States government enacted certain laws that are designed to punish the act, not the thought behind the act. The Supreme Court has ruled that while a defendant's bias cannot be used as evidence of guilt, it can be used to help establish a motive, which is an important aspect of any criminal case. For example, there is The Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990, which was stated previously. Another law called the Hate Crimes Prevention Act of 2007, requires that “anyone who commits a crime due to actual of perceived race, color, religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, or disability, can be sentenced to no more than ten years, unless kidnapping, attempted kidnapping, aggravated sexual abuse, attempted aggravated sexual abuse, or an attempt to kill is involved.” Additionally, the 1969 Federal Hate Crimes Law, which now includes the transgender community because of the Matthew Sheppard Act of 2009, punishes those who "willingly injures, intimidates or interferes with another person, or attempts to do so, by force because of the other person's race, color, religion or national origin" and because of his/her attempting to engage in one of six types of federally protected activities, such as attending school, patronizing a public place/facility, applying for employment, acting as a juror in a state court or voting” with imprisonment or payment of a fine. And The Violent Crime and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 (which only applies to federal crimes) requires the United States Sentencing Commission to increase the penalties for hate crimes committed on the basis of the actual or perceived race, color, religion, national origin, ethnicity, or sex of any person. The FBI also gathers data for Hate Crime Statistics.
I propose that, firstly, more research be done to create a definition that includes all that a hate crime entails. The Passage of the Matthew Sheppard’s Act, which changed the 1969 Federal Hate Crimes Law to include the transgender community in its definition of a hate crime, is proof that only with research and action can we make improvements. Also, a problem arises from the enactment of laws that require gathering information to give statistics. First of all, the statistics are probably inaccurate due to underreporting and secondly, information about the statistics is not readily available to the public, so many are not completely aware of what is going on around them. So, we need to make statistics available to everyone. It is difficult to tackle the problem of under reporting, so the government should find ways to accommodate that (by, for example, being more exact with the information they do have and distributing that information). The penalties for hate crimes are severe but it does not make sense that laws apply in some cases and not others. Although some may feel it is extreme, I believe we should sentence the violators to a type of “sentence” that forces them or their loved ones to experience what their victims did. Sometimes, people don’t get the message until something bad happens for them.
A Hate Crime is a Hate Crime, it should not be punished based on where it happened, or how it happened, or whom it happened to, rather it should be based on why it happened- and if the only way to do that is by monitoring our thoughts then that’s allowed. After all, our actions are based on our thoughts.
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