Hate Crimes

Hate crimes (also known as bias-motivated crimes) occur when a perpetrator targets a victim because of his or her perceived membership in a certain social group, usually defined by racial group, religion, sexual orientation, disability, ethnicity, nationality, age, gender, gender identity, or political affiliation.

A "hate crime" can take two forms: "hate crime" generally refers to criminal acts which are seen to have been motivated by hatred of one or more of the listed conditions. The second kind is hate speech, which is speech defined as crime. While hate crimes are rarely debated, the hate speech concept is controversial, as criminalizing speech can be seen as impugning freedom of speech. Incidents may involve physical assault, damage to property, bullying, harassment, verbal abuse or insults, or offensive graffiti or letters.

History

Concern about hate crimes has become increasingly prominent among policymakers in many nations and at all levels of government in recent years, but the phenomenon is not new. Examples from the past include Roman persecution of Christians, the Ottoman genocide of Armenians, and the Nazi "final solution" for the Jews, and more recently, the ethnic cleansing in Bosnia and genocide in Rwanda. Hate crimes have shaped and sometimes defined world history. In the United States, racial and religious biases have inspired most hate crimes. As Europeans began to colonize the New World in the 16th and 17th centuries, Native Americans increasingly became the targets of bias-motivated intimidation and violence. During the past two centuries, some of the more typical examples of hate crimes in the US include lynchings of African Americans, cross burnings to drive black families from predominantly white neighborhoods, assaults on white people travelling predominantly black neighborhoods, assaults on gay, lesbian and transgender people, and the painting of swastikas on Jewish synagogues, as well as attacks against European Americans, such as the Murder of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom and the Wichita Massacre.

Psychological effects

From a psychological standpoint, hate crimes may produce devastating consequences.

• effects on people - psychological and affective disturbances; repercussion on the victim's identity and self-esteem; both reinforced by the degree of violence of a hate crime, usually stronger than that of a common one.

• effect on the targeted group - generalized terror in the group from which the victim belongs, inspiring feelings of vulnerability over the other members, who could be the next victims.

• effect on other vulnerable groups - ominous effects over minoritarian groups or over groups that identify themselves with the targeted one, especially when the referred hate is based on an ideology or doctrine that preaches simultaneously against several groups.

• effect on society as a whole - the stimulation of divisions in society, which would be an abomination against concepts like harmony and equality in a multicultural society.

Hate crime laws

Hate crime laws generally fall into one of several categories: (1) laws defining specific bias-motivated acts as distinct crimes; (2) criminal penalty-enhancement laws; (3) laws creating a distinct civil cause of action for hate crimes; and (4) laws requiring administrative agencies to collect hate crime statistics. Sometimes (as in Bosnia and Herzegovina), the laws focus on war crimes, genocide, and crimes against humanity with the prohibition against discriminatory action limited to public officials.