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Liz Michael for United States Senate

Ishmael
by Daniel Quinn

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Why Hate Crimes Should Not Be Treated Differently From Any Other Crimes

by Jen Grace

On Monday, at pre-ceremony drinks, we were interrupted by Vanessa who was canvassing on behalf of the Human Rights Campaign to garner support for making Hate Crimes federal offences.

I refused to sign the petition, and there was something of a political argument. I felt a need to explain my position in more detail, so wrote a longish essay on the subject.

Why Hate Crimes Should Not Be Treated Differently From Any Other Crimes.

Hate crimes are horrible. I will not deny that to be attacked (whether verbally, physically, or sexually) or discriminated against (economically or socially) simply because of one’s race, religion, sexual orientation, or some other physical or social characteristic is more horrible than simply suffering because one is in the wrong place at the wrong time, if only because it attacks one’s sense of self in a much deeper way. However, the horrible nature of hate crimes does not require that they be treated any differently from any other crimes against one’s person. In fact a good case can be made that such different treatment is both morally wrong and unconstitutional.

The Morality Of Classification Of A Crime As A Hate Crime.

Consider if you will, a home invasion burglary. The perpetrators invade a house, beat up the residents, steal their valuables and leave. Ideally the police are summoned, the residents receive appropriate medical attention, the perpetrators are caught and punished, and the valuables retrieved. In the real world this doesn’t always happen as cleanly or as efficiently, but usually there is some retrieval of valuables and perpetrators are usually caught sooner or later.

How about a mugging? There you are, quietly withdrawing a quick $100 from an ATM one evening to pay for dinner with your friends. A perpetrator appears out of the darkness, takes your $100, smacks you around a little and disappears back into the darkness.

Or a bar fight? You and your friends first exchange words with “the other guys”, the words become more heated, and before you have time to make a break for the parking lot blows are exchanged and the furniture starts flying.

Now: Does it make any material difference if any of these examples were hate crimes? Would your bruises be more painful because your attacker hated you for a specific characteristic? Could he have stolen more than the $100 you had on you because your dinner date was of the same gender? Is the damage to your house, or the bar, and more serious because it was inflicted out of hate for the color of your skin or your religious beliefs?

I contend that it does not make one iota of material difference. Nor does it make one iota of moral difference: a mugger is as morally wrong for mugging a random victim as he is for mugging one he selects on the basis of race, religion or sexual orientation.

So why classify some crimes as hate crimes?

Because law enforcement doesn’t take the beating of a black man by a gang of whites as seriously as that of a black man by a gang of blacks? Or because they treat assaults on openly homosexual men as less important than those on apparently heterosexual men? That’s not a reason to create a new federal classification of crime. That’s a reason for some re-education of law enforcement.

So are we classifying some crimes as hate crimes because the victim of a “hate crime” is more worthy of justice than the victim of an “ordinary” crime? How can this be justified? On what grounds?

Justice is portrayed as blind to indicate that She is equally fair to all people whatever their race, religion, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, socio-economic standing, or any other classification that could be made. To classify a crime as being more worthy of justice because of some characteristic of the victim is a travesty of justice. There is some sense in classifying violent crimes on the basis of the degree of violence: simple assault (hitting or kicking with bare hands/feet) is usually less violent than assault with a weapon. If the lesser degree of violence carries a lighter sentence there is both some justice and some incentive for the assailant to control the level of violence (and weapons) he uses. There is also some sense in classifying crimes by intent: premeditated and unpremeditated murder for example, though this is less useful as in either case, the victim is equally dead.

Classifying some crimes as “hate crimes” and attaching to them harsher penalties creates a hierarchy of victimization. This is morally wrong. To say that victim A is more worthy of justice than victim B, purely on the basis of a characteristic of victim A, is unjust.

This is creeping altruism as its worst. Altruism is the philosophy which gave rise to Communism: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his need.” You don’t have to look long or far to see what happens in a system based on need rather than ability. Those who contribute the least to society become the most rewarded, they prosper from the work of those who can and do contribute. Over time the able become less able: they either “get smart” and join the needy, or they quit. A diminishing pool of the able supports an increasingly clamorous pool of needy. In the same way, creating a hierarchy of victimhood will create a hierarchy of excuses on the part of the criminals: “It wasn’t such a bad crime really, I only murdered a white middle-class straight man, it wasn’t like I hated him or anything.”

In order to be fair, Justice must be impartial. No characteristic of the victim can be considered as making the crime “better” or “worse”. Murder is murder, assault is assault. Both are wrong whoever the victim is. In neither case should the punishment be altered by the victim’s identity or the perpetrator’s personal ideology.

The Constitutionality of Federal Hate Crime Legislation

Well, let’s start with the 6th Amendment:

In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and impartial trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted by the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense.

Now I’m not a student of Constitutional Law, but it seems fairly clear to me that the intent here is to let the States prosecute their own criminals. I’m sure that the first criminal prosecuted under a Federal hate crimes statute could take an appeal to the Supreme Court and challenge the constitutionality of such a statute quite sucessfully.

Then there’s the 10th Amendment:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

This basically says that the Federal government, can’t take away from the individual States any powers the Federal government has not been specifically granted by the Constitution. The 6th Amendment gives the power to prosecute criminals to the States.

Creating a Federal hate crime law is basically an unconstitutional usurpation of States’ rights by the Federal Government. At least, that’s my non-legal opinion.

There’s no need for hate crime legislation. Murder, assault, destruction of property, rape, and any other crimes which could be constituted to be hate crimes are already covered by existing legislation. There’s no need to add more laws to the statute book.

The Economics of Federal Hate Crime Legislation

If such legislation is passed the Federal government will need to set up special committees, task forces, bureaus and agencies to study the field, prosecute the criminals, and report back to us on how effective they are. The convicted hate criminals will have to be incarcerated in Federal prisons. All of this costs money. The money will have to come from taxes. After all, taxes are the only way a government have of raising funds to do anything.

We will pay more because, in addition to the extended bureaucracy, Federal cases are more expensive to prosecute, Federal jails are more expensive to run, and the Federally imposed sentences will probably be heavier than State ones.

All this in the name of victim glorification. Welcome to the United Socialist States of Amerika. Check your freedom and weapons at the door and hand over your wallet.