LogFAQs > #932089880

DiScOrD tHe LuNaTiC posted...

The reason hate crime laws exist is to try and dissuade overt actions against classes of people who have traditionally been treated as less than human. The argument is that crimes which invoke stereotypes or prejudices about that class deserve harsher punishment because those views are used to justify the crime committed by the offender, since the victim is 'other'.

Wow you finally came up with an argument, color me surprised. It isn't a very good one but still.

So firstly it has been shown time and again that stiffer legal punishments don't actually dissuade the vast majority of criminals and even if we pretend they did for a second it would be near impossible in the vast majority of cases to even prove that particular bias existed at trial. Like is every crime against a black/gay/transgender person a hate crime? How could anyone prove there was a racial/homophobic/transphobic motive involved unless the suspect literally says "yeah I only did this because fuck those people" which isn't going to happen often regardless of if those are their true feelings how could a judge reasonably apply the law, by which I mean potentially adding several years to the suspects sentence.

Secondly I love how you openly say these laws exist to "protect" certain groups of people, effectively saying it's less important if anyone not in these groups (like White men) are the victims of crime, it's textbook racism and you don't even realize it. Another racist implication is that just because someone appears to be part of a given group they are. If a black guy moved to the States from say South Africa and was beat up here would his assailant still deserve this "retroactive retribution" in the form of a stiffer punishment just because the guy is black? Are we going to have a tier list of the groups who were treated the worst in history (according to who?) in every court house with mathematical formula for how much the court should care about them?

Thirdly another thing you've brought up ad nauseam is "we have hate crime laws for a reason...". I'll clue you in on what that reason is, it has nothing to do with "Justice" and everything to do with politicians who want to pass feel good laws to get easy votes from gullible chumps and so they can say they give a damn about certain groups of people. Because here's the thing, in every criminal court I've ever heard of the Judge has the authority to increase or decrease the sentence they give someone based on something called mitigating or aggravating circumstances. That is to say, even in a state like mine without hate crime laws if someone obviously did something for a racist or whatever reason and showed no remorse they could still give them a harsher sentence. Hate crime laws are entirely unnecessary from any point of view.

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