Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[Fried Egg]

I have been pondering the concept for some time and I am becoming increasingly sceptical that the concept of hate crimes should have a place in law.

So what exactly is a hate crime? The legal definition might vary from place to place but here in the UK it is defined as:

Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.

And what is the effect of something being deemed a "hate crime"? It can lead to one of two outcomes:

1) A heavier sentence being awarded than would otherwise have been the case had the crime not been regarded as hateful. i.e. if you were convicted of assault, you might get a longer sentence if it is also judged that you targeted your victim because you hated their protected group identity.

2) Something that would not otherwise have been a crime may be treated as a crime if it is regarded as hateful. Such as verbal abuse or incitement to hatred.

Now, let me be clear. I am not condoning hateful behaviour or justifying it in any way. I think it is usually morally reprehensible. But I think it is problematic to incorporate it into law and the criminal justice system.

Firstly, I do not think the criminality of an action should in anyway rest on the perception of the victim (or even a random passer by). It should be an objectively measurable fact.

Secondly, why is the impact of a crime really greater on the victim if it happened to have been hateful? If someone murders me, it doesn't make me any more dead if they did it because of my race.

Thirdly, it is only certain characteristics that are "protected", certain group identities. Someone might attack me because they hate me on a personal level but that's not considered a hate crime. They might do it because they hate ginger people but still that's fine. But if it's the wrong kind of hate, such as for being gay, that makes it much worse?

Fourthly, if an action (or something that is said) is not considered a crime in the absence being considered hateful of a particular group, it should not be considered a crime at all. It becomes a multi-tiered justice system that treats people differently based on their group identities (or the group identity of their victims).

And of course there is the code of practice that police have (in England and Wales) to record and retain information pertaining to Non Crime Hate Incidents (NCHI's) whereby incidents are reported to the police of incidents that are perceived to be (by anyone other than the subject) as actions (or speech) that are considered to be motivated by prejudice or hostility towards persons with a particular characteristic. They do not themselves meet the criteria for being treated as a crime but the incidents may be recorded and retained for later use, perhaps as supporting evidence in a future prosecution of a hate crime of that individual. If such an incident is recorded and retained by the police, they must contact and notify the individual in question, but they will not tell them who made the complaint nor what the alleged incident was.

[Mo_reese]

I think you make a very good case.

[Lagayascienza]

On the face of it, your argument makes sense. However, what it fails to acknowledge is that there are particular groups that have been subject to violence based on prejudice and hatred over and above what the community at large has been subject to. Anti-hate crime legislation is an attempt to redress this imbalance.

The difficulty is that legislative attempts to redress this imbalance can result in different types of unfairness such as those as you mention.

In a world where particular groups were not subject to a level of violence greater than other members of a community, there would be no perceived need for anti-hate crime legislation. But that is not the world we live in. Caucasians, heterosexuals and Christians who make up the majority of the populations of the UK and other Western nations, have not been singled out by the haters and been subjected by them to violence based on race, sexuality or religion and so they do not need protection whereas the minorities mentioned arguably do.

If legislation to redress this imbalance is having unforeseen or unintended consequences then the legislation needs to be rewritten so that those consequences do not occur. For example, you mention heavier sentences for hate fueled violence against minorities. I don’t agree with this. A crime is a crime is a crime. Sentences for say, assault, should be the same regardless of what fueled the assault.

Rather than special sentencing rules, what is important is that perpetrators don’t get away with assault. In the past, assaults on minorities were not prosecuted as vigorously as assaults against non-minorities. For example, it was once seen as a bit of fun for we heterosexual blokes in my own country to go out and rough up gays. The police often turned a blind eye to such assaults. The same goes for mistreatment of people of color. That is unfair and unjust and it needed to be addressed. This is a policing problem and not necessarily a problem with the laws relating to assault. Crime needs to be prosecuted whoever commits it and whatever their reasons. What is really needed is legislation to enforce fairness in policing.

[Fried Egg]

On the face of it, your argument makes sense. However, what it fails to acknowledge is that there are particular groups that have been subject to violence based on prejudice and hatred over and above what the community at large has been subject to. Anti-hate crime legislation is an attempt to redress this imbalance.

I don't doubt that hate crime legislation had good intentions behind it. I can certainly understand the motivations behind it and that certain groups of people have suffered much discrimination and violence historically. But the question is how effectively does it actually address problems of discrimination? The rise of such legislation does not seem to have correlated with a decline in social tensions. Indeed, it seems to have exacerbated them. Surveys show public perceptions of racial tensions has deteriorated in recent years despite no material increase in inter-racial violence. Instead, the focus on group identities has reinforced our perceived differences and driven us apart. In other words, the unintended consequences of well intentioned policies has made things worse.

If legislation to redress this imbalance is having unforeseen or unintended consequences then the legislation needs to be rewritten so that those consequences do not occur.

Well, indeed. That is precisely what I would argue for.

[Sculptor1]

I have been pondering the concept for some time and I am becoming increasingly sceptical that the concept of hate crimes should have a place in law.

So what exactly is a hate crime? The legal definition might vary from place to place but here in the UK it is defined as:

Any criminal offence which is perceived by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a person's race or perceived race; religion or perceived religion; sexual orientation or perceived sexual orientation; disability or perceived disability and any crime motivated by hostility or prejudice against a person who is transgender or perceived to be transgender.

And what is the effect of something being deemed a "hate crime"? It can lead to one of two outcomes:

1) A heavier sentence being awarded than would otherwise have been the case had the crime not been regarded as hateful. i.e. if you were convicted of assault, you might get a longer sentence if it is also judged that you targeted your victim because you hated their protected group identity.

2) Something that would not otherwise have been a crime may be treated as a crime if it is regarded as hateful. Such as verbal abuse or incitement to hatred.

Now, let me be clear. I am not condoning hateful behaviour or justifying it in any way. I think it is usually morally reprehensible. But I think it is problematic to incorporate it into law and the criminal justice system.

Firstly, I do not think the criminality of an action should in anyway rest on the perception of the victim (or even a random passer by). It should be an objectively measurable fact.

Secondly, why is the impact of a crime really greater on the victim if it happened to have been hateful? If someone murders me, it doesn't make me any more dead if they did it because of my race.

Thirdly, it is only certain characteristics that are "protected", certain group identities. Someone might attack me because they hate me on a personal level but that's not considered a hate crime. They might do it because they hate ginger people but still that's fine. But if it's the wrong kind of hate, such as for being gay, that makes it much worse?

Fourthly, if an action (or something that is said) is not considered a crime in the absence being considered hateful of a particular group, it should not be considered a crime at all. It becomes a multi-tiered justice system that treats people differently based on their group identities (or the group identity of their victims).

And of course there is the code of practice that police have (in England and Wales) to record and retain information pertaining to Non Crime Hate Incidents (NCHI's) whereby incidents are reported to the police of incidents that are perceived to be (by anyone other than the subject) as actions (or speech) that are considered to be motivated by prejudice or hostility towards persons with a particular characteristic. They do not themselves meet the criteria for being treated as a crime but the incidents may be recorded and retained for later use, perhaps as supporting evidence in a future prosecution of a hate crime of that individual. If such an incident is recorded and retained by the police, they must contact and notify the individual in question, but they will not tell them who made the complaint nor what the alleged incident was.

Are you a straight white middle class male??
Just asking.

[Good_Egg]

Anti-hate crime legislation is an attempt to redress this imbalance.

You're right: that is the purpose and motivation behind these laws.

But that's not what law is for. Law is there to protect every individual from wrongdoing by other individuals. Not to balance the level of wrongdoing experienced by different groups.

You're right to say that that is a role of policing policy. More police on the beat in a high-crime area is an appropriate response; heavier sentencing for crimes in a high-crime area or a lower threshold of criminality for acts committed in a high-crime area are not.

Because justice is proportionality.

We humans are social animals. We have a built-in tendency to think that if "everybody does" something then it's OK to do so. This is false. Assaults against minorities do not become less wrong when they are frequent. That is unjust to the victims.

Conversely, assaults against minorities do not become more wrong when they are frequent. That is unjust to the perpetrators. A crime that you commit does not become more wrong if lots of other people happen to be committing similar crimes over some period of time.

Justice calls for all crimes to be punished in proprtion to the severity of the individual crime.

If an individual repeats the same type of crime, an escalating response is not unjust. Leniency for a first offence, with increasing severity of punishment for repeat offences until deterrence is achieved, is reasonable. What is unreasonable is applying this to defined groups of people. Punishing an offence more severely because it is a repeat of offences committed by others (of the same race, age, gender etc) is unjust.

And a failure to see that is a basic misunderstanding of the relationship between groups and individuals.

[Lagayascienza]

Special sentencing laws for hate crimes will probably do more harm than good. What is needed is non-discriminatory policing and prosecution so that perpetrators do not escape arrest and prosecution. It does not matter who commits a crime, or what their motivations were. What matters is that perpetrators are arrested and prosecuted and that they get the same sentence as anyone else who commits any particular crime. That is fair and just.

But also required for fairness and justice are equality in policing and prosecution. Such equality is necessary so that, for example, bully boys who bash gays, or racists who attack blacks, don't escape justice just because the perpetrators and the cops are mostly heterosexual or white. Unfortunately, there are all too many examples of such injustice in policing and prosecution.

Perhaps employing more people from minority groups in police forces and offices of public prosecutors would do more good than hate crime legislation. But, then, those who get all hot under the collar about DEI would be up in arms. Maybe the best that can be hoped for is that one does not become a member of an oppressed minority. So mind you don't get born black or gay.

[Pattern-chaser]

Now, let me be clear. I am not condoning hateful behaviour or justifying it in any way. I think it is usually morally reprehensible. But I think it is problematic to incorporate it into law and the criminal justice system.

Firstly, I do not think the criminality of an action should in anyway rest on the perception of the victim (or even a random passer by). It should be an objectively measurable fact.

I have always assumed that our laws are — sweeping-generalisation alert! — an attempt to codify our moral consensus. Is that correct?

If it is correct, then laws regarding hate crimes are the same as any other: to forbid something we consider (morally) unacceptable. In this particular case, the law seems to say that it's unacceptable to accuse someone on the basis of the group(s) they belong to, not because of something they did themselves. I.e. it isn't illegal for me to be an elderly white male, because being elderly, white, or male, isn't (currently!) illegal.

So, if I burgle your house, it's fine to accuse me of being a **%£^!! thief, but it's not OK to accuse me of being a **%£^!! white thief. That's because not all white people are thieves, which this accusation implies, and it's because being white isn't a crime. Burglary is the crime, in this example, not racial membership, or anything of that ilk.

So it's completely fine to accuse someone of something *they* did, but not to accuse, by implication, a particular group to be guilty of that crime.

*****************

I understand that there are a great number of details that warrant discussion here, but I wonder what all the fuss is about? Hate crime laws seek to target those who, in their turn, target others on the basis of their group membership: race, religion, sex, age... Is that wrong or bad, in some way?

************************

P.S. I assume when you refer to "objective" (above), you mean something like impartial? And yet, if I am correct in my initial assumption, also above, all of our laws, perhaps especially our hate-crime law, are very much partial. Isn't that so?

In using "objective", are you not seeking certainty that doesn't really exist? A sort of absoluteness that will give you unchallengeable and certain justice, if you just interpret, enforce and implement these magnificent and objective laws? This is the impression I have gained from what you say. Perhaps I have misunderstood...?

[Fried Egg]

I have always assumed that our laws are — sweeping-generalisation alert! — an attempt to codify our moral consensus. Is that correct?

I don't think it is. Or at least I don't think it should be. I would say it is (generally speaking) there to protect the rights of individuals from transgressions of others.

It used to be the moral consensus that marriage out of wedlock was wrong, that homosexuality was wrong, that black people were inferior to white people, etc. Hence the law should protect individuals from persecution (even when a majority of people in society think that it is wrong). It does not matter if the majority of people in my society disapprove of my way of life, or my innate inclinations or characteristics. As long as I am not harming anyone else, why should I be crimialised?

If this is the premise that underlies our laws, then for something to be considered a crime it needs to be demonstrated to cause harm to others. And if this is the case, how can we criminalise one incident that is identical with another incident that isn't a crime, the only different being the thoughts in the mind of of the perpetrators?

I suspect though, that people who support the idea of hate crimes will disagree with my fundamental notion of what the law is there for in the first place.

[Thomyum2]

Secondly, why is the impact of a crime really greater on the victim if it happened to have been hateful? If someone murders me, it doesn't make me any more dead if they did it because of my race.

Yes, the impact of a hate crime really is greater.

I think that what you are overlooking here is that a hate crime is not a crime that just impacts a single individual but is a crime that targets and affects an entire community or class of people. Hate crimes aren't acts against an individual - they are acts intended to terrorize all individuals belonging to a particular group. The lynching of blacks in the American south, for example, was not carried out because of the perpetrators' hatred for black individuals - it was done to intimidate and subjugate the entire black community - to create fear that would discourage any of them from asserting the rights that they were legally entitled to as equal citizens.

The effects of hate crimes go well beyond whatever harm is done to the individual. If you become aware that you are hated and targeted simply for who you are, or who you are perceived to be you can quickly become afraid to show yourself in public or stand up for your own rights out of fear of being harmed. For that reason, hate crimes are corrosive and destructive to an entire society and to the rights that free persons enjoy, not just the immediately impacted individuals, and deserve to be treated as more serious acts. Part of the role of a justice system is to protect individual rights and ensure freedoms, not just to respond to each isolated violation of law.

[LuckyR]

The answer to the OPs question is unaddressed in his posting namely that if one guy murders one other guy, the victim is dead (as stipulated) the victim's family and friends mourn. If a second guy kills the leader of a minotity activist group, the leader is dead, but the killing isn't to steal his belongings or as revenge against a personal affront the victim did to the perp, it's main motivation isn't even to kill the victim, it's to intimidate the group specifically and their entire community generally. Thus there are many more victims, thus receiving more punishment is logical.

This concept is well understood legally and legislatively. There are different definitions of crimes and therefore punishments for acts of terror than there are for doing the exact same offense for say, financial reasons. In fact some actions, such as wiring money, are completely legal if sent to your sister, but completely illegal when sent to al qaeda. Context matters, everyone knows that.

[Good_Egg]

Yes, the impact of a hate crime really is greater.

The effects of hate crimes go well beyond whatever harm is done to the individual. If you become aware that you are hated and targeted simply for who you are, or who you are perceived to be you can quickly become afraid to show yourself in public or stand up for your own rights out of fear of being harmed. For that reason, hate crimes are corrosive and destructive to an entire society and to the rights that free persons enjoy

All crimes have that wider social impact. E.g. If there has been a spate of muggings in the town where you live, one of the consequences might be that people are afraid to go out at night.

Such impacts occur regardless of the motivation of the criminal.

If you say that intent to cause such fear is worse (and thus worthy of a more severe punishment) than other motives for crime, I'd tend to agree. That's the argument for punishing terrorism severely.

If so-called "hate crime" laws were only about punishing the intent to cause fear in the community, I suspect few would have a problem with them.

Should we be punishing more severely those crimes that contribute to such fear when that is not the intended motive ?

Is someone who commits a mugging in the context of a spate of muggings thereby more deserving of punishment than the person who committed the first offence in the series ?

I would say no. Someone who commits a crime in the belief that such crimes are commonplace (and thus in some sense tolerated or tolerable) seems to me to have a less-criminal mindser. Copycat crimes are not more evil than the original.

[Fried Egg]

To my two previous interlocutors who both broadly made the same point; that hate crimes have an impact not only on the immediate victims but on the broader communities of which they are a member, I would say that all crime has an impact beyond the immediate victims of the act itself. High crime rates create a fear of crime because of other associations beyond group identity. Such as locality (i.e. living in a high crime area).

Also, I think it is a bit of a stretch to claim that acts motivated by hate are necessarily aimed at group intimidation. That might sometimes be the intent but often it might just be an inadvertent effect. Or something might not be motivated by hate at all, but is perceived to be by a third party and so gets treated as a "hate crime".

And neither of you addressed the point I made earlier that the introduction of hate crime laws have not actually had any effect in deterring hate crimes and have in fact led to a hyper awareness of group identities in crime that has inflamed the public's perception of inter-racial relations.

Now, I am not saying that the intentions or motivations behind criminal acts are not important. If we are to try and prevent crime we need to understand people's motivations before you can do that. But I'm not sure that the concept of a "hate" crime helps in this respect and is now leading to unintended consequences and even (in some cases) being weaponized by activists to silence free speech.

[Pattern-chaser]

I have always assumed that our laws are — sweeping-generalisation alert! — an attempt to codify our moral consensus. Is that correct?

I don't think it is. Or at least I don't think it should be. I would say it is (generally speaking) there to protect the rights of individuals from transgressions of others.

It's interesting that, when I offer a description of what the law *is*, its *nature* and/or its *origin*, you respond with a description of what it *does* (or should do).

It used to be the moral consensus that marriage out of wedlock was wrong, that homosexuality was wrong, that black people were inferior to white people, etc.

Yes, and the laws of the time reflected this moral consensus.

Hence the law should protect individuals from persecution (even when a majority of people in society think that it is wrong). It does not matter if the majority of people in my society disapprove of my way of life, or my innate inclinations or characteristics. As long as I am not harming anyone else, why should I be criminalised?

The conclusions you leap to do not seem to follow from the reasoning that came before? I might guess that they are simply a mild homage to your individualist ideological persuasions?

If this is the premise that underlies our laws, then for something to be considered a crime it needs to be demonstrated to cause harm to others. And if this is the case, how can we criminalise one incident that is identical with another incident that isn't a crime, the only different being the thoughts in the mind of of the perpetrators?

I would observe that we in the UK have 2 similar crimes defined, one is murder and the other is manslaughter. In both cases, the victim is just as dead. The difference between them is "the thoughts in the mind of of the perpetrators", yes? Do you think that this contrast indicates that our law(s) against killing people are lacking in some way?

[Fried Egg]

It's interesting that, when I offer a description of what the law *is*, its *nature* and/or its *origin*, you respond with a description of what it *does* (or should do).

I was only trying to point out that there is a distinction to be made between what's moral and what's legal. That the laws should protect individuals even when a majority of people in that society view them (or what they do) as immoral.

For instance; adultery. Most people regard this as immoral but few would say that it should be a crime.

Yes, not all societies believe in such a distinction. But in the west most societies do have such a distinction. Sometimes, our laws do stray from protecting rights towards imposing the "moral consensus" and such moves should be opposed and I believe that's what I'm doing now; opposing just such a move.

I would observe that we in the UK have 2 similar crimes defined, one is murder and the other is manslaughter. In both cases, the victim is just as dead. The difference between them is "the thoughts in the mind of of the perpetrators", yes? Do you think that this contrast indicates that our law(s) against killing people are lacking in some way?

Yes, strictly speaking, the only difference here are the thoughts in the heads of the perpetrators, true. But I think that one can find several things that distinguish this from hate crime laws:

1) The motivation/intention is not relevant to distinction between murder and manslaughter. i.e. either murder or manslaughter might be judged to be a hate crime if it was deemed that perpetrator was motivated by hate of a group identity. It's about whether they acted in a pre-meditated way (as opposed to the heat of the moment).

2) The murder/manslaughter distinction is universally applied (regardless of group identity).

3) The perception of third parties is irrelevant to the distinction between murder and manslaughter. Hate crimes on the other hand are determined by the perception of third parties.

Hate is essentially something that might be regarded as a motive. The investigators of a crime usually set about trying to ascertain motive when trying to establish the guilt of a suspect. But it is not normally regarded as the crime itself.