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Underground > Switchboard >

hate crime legislation to be enacted

02:07 / 13.02.02

[nb: this is from nzoom.com, and it applies to the new zill'nd govt pushing through hate crimes legislation. I want to know if people think this is a good idea or not. My guess is 'no'.]

Tougher sentences for "hate crimes"

People convicted of gay-bashing, racist attacks or other so-called "hate crimes" face tougher sentences under proposed law changes.

It is part of a sweeping reform of sentencing and parole conditions which has already come under fire.

It is too late for those who killed Elikena Inia a Tongan man who died in what police called a race brawl earlier this year.

Or the men who viciously beat Auckland waiter Stephen Byrne in what the judge labelled a senseless hate crime.

But in the future, criminals face tougher sentences if prosectors can prove they held a prejudice against the victim.

"Prejudice based on someone's race or sexuality or diability religion then there's an arbitrary nature to that, anyone from that group is actually vulnerable to that offender attacking them," Tim Barnett * Justice Select Committee Chair said.

But not everyone thinks the proposed changes are a good idea.

"If you make it so so dire then the offenders jugdement is I might as well kill them or do something really serious -beat them senseless or something like that," Steven Franks** Act, Justice spokesperson said.

But Eugene Moore disagrees - he earns a living teaching police how to spot whether an assault or murder might be driven by homophobia.

He says the law will help raise awareness and give victims more rights.

"If you don't know what to spot you don't see it and if you don't see you don't solve the crime and people go unpunished and they continue committing the crimes," Homophobia Educator Moore said.

The changes are part of the sentencing and parole reform bill the government's election promise to get tough on crime and on its causes.

The government's wiped an offender's automatic right to parole after two thirds of time served.

But it is giving even violent offenders the right to apply for parole after just one third of their sentence.

The opposition says that is more evidence this law is full of holes.

*homo
** dorky guy in dorky free-markets rule kinda party

futher information at http://www.govt.nz http://www.act.org.nz

03:26 / 13.02.02

Why would you guess people would be against it?

I'm ambivalent. But I reckon if you accept the argument that sentencing acts as a deterrent, then their should be harsher penalties for hate crimes. Both because hate crimes are often far, far more violent than other assaults, and because they aren't directed just at their victims but at whole populations they seek to terrorise. Anything that will cut down on hate crimes is a positive, in my book.

On the other hand, I'm not sure sentencing does act as a deterrent, and jail in general is pretty obviously fucked. Part of me says 'no, I don't want young guys to get put in prison for long stretches based on one mistake', another part is saying, 'who gives a shit, they deserve it'. So, like I say, I'm ambivalent.

And I think it was pretty inappropriate to throw around the word 'homo' in relation to such a serious/sensitive subject.

11:12 / 13.02.02

I don't know how I feel about this. Part of me wonders whether motivation for an act should be a factor in determining how 'bad' it is. But then of course this already happens - if something is unintentional, then it's a lesser crime than if it is intentional.

11:53 / 13.02.02

"if something is unintentional, then it's a lesser crime than if it is intentional"

precisely.

all my friends who have been queer bashed wouldn't have been attacked if they were straight. presumably matthew shepherd and stephen lawrence would be alive today if they weren't, respectively, queer and black. the bloke in oregan who, a couple of years back, robbed a house and shot dead the two lesbians who lived there, stating afterwards how much easier it was to kill them because they were lesbians.... the list goes on and on.

it is obviously against the law to assault *anyone*, but surely as much as anything else such specific anti-hate crime laws state clearly that such behaviour is unacceptable. minority groups are more vulnerable to physical attack and should be seen to be protected. it may not act as a particular deterrent, but it still needs to be there, i think.

although i have heard many times that street people are regularly attacked and sexually assaulted and i think that they also need specific protection.

[ 13-02-2002: Message edited by: shortfatdyke ]

Our Lady of The Two Towers

16:10 / 13.02.02

I notice transgendered hate-crimes don't appear to be mentioned...

pointless and uncalled for

16:23 / 13.02.02

Do you think that we'll see an increase in post incarceration violent crime? The ones where some person decides that his life is ruined by a long stretch because a bunch of minority groups pushed for a harsher scentance.

Will this increased scentancing be coupled with increased counselling?

Will this make a bad situation worse?

18:13 / 13.02.02

so, what? You have to be able to prove they had a predjudice against the victim? Of course they did, or they wouldn't have given them the bash. All crime of this nature is hate crime, and it sends out an incredibly mixed message to say that some people have pain that is more deserving of attention than others. If a straight man and a gay man get bashed in exactly the same way on the same night, do you want to be the one to tell the straight guy that his bashing wasn't as important bcause he isn't gay?
Additionally, one of the things that freaks me out about the idea that you have to 'prove the person held a predjudice' is how? It's incredibly easy to say "I distincly heard Mr. Smith yelling 'Die, coconut, die", whether he did or not. What constitutes 'proof'?
Good-o. The other problem is that gay people aren't the only ones who need anything out of this; it's also the people who would foster resentment and anger and ignorance and perpetrate these crimes. This is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and it's a no-smoking sign in a bar: why did the guy even get the opportunity to hurl himself off the cliff? Why are people smoking at all? People have these opinions and feelings because they are ignorant, and because they are scared. If we want to do more good, we have to educate people, and we have to reassure people, and I'm not sure 'we' are doing much of either.
And, finally, the use of the word 'homo'. We have two openly gay MPs and one transgender MP in our parliament. Of the two gay MPs, one is a complete toady moron and one is not. Tim Barnett, who chairs the Justice committee which this bill will slide through (and former leader/chair/president of the British Stonewall group) is not. When I say Tim Barnett is a homo, I just mean that - he is a homosexual. The slap is never in the word, it's in the intention.

18:14 / 13.02.02

so, what? You have to be able to prove they had a predjudice against the victim? Of course they did, or they wouldn't have given them the bash. All crime of this nature is hate crime, and it sends out an incredibly mixed message to say that some people have pain that is more deserving of attention than others. If a straight man and a gay man get bashed in exactly the same way on the same night, do you want to be the one to tell the straight guy that his bashing wasn't as important bcause he isn't gay?
Additionally, one of the things that freaks me out about the idea that you have to 'prove the person held a predjudice' is how? It's incredibly easy to say "I distincly heard Mr. Smith yelling 'Die, coconut, die", whether he did or not. What constitutes 'proof'?
Good-o. The other problem is that gay people aren't the only ones who need anything out of this; it's also the people who would foster resentment and anger and ignorance and perpetrate these crimes. This is the ambulance at the bottom of the cliff, and it's a no-smoking sign in a bar: why did the guy even get the opportunity to hurl himself off the cliff? Why are people smoking at all? People have these opinions and feelings because they are ignorant, and because they are scared. If we want to do more good, we have to educate people, and we have to reassure people, and I'm not sure 'we' are doing much of either.
And, finally, the use of the word 'homo'. We have two openly gay MPs and one transgender MP in our parliament. Of the two gay MPs, one is a complete toady moron and one is not. Tim Barnett, who chairs the Justice committee which this bill will slide through (and former leader/chair/president of the British Stonewall group) is not. When I say Tim Barnett is a homo, I just mean that - he is a homosexual. The slap is never in the word, it's in the intention.

18:32 / 13.02.02

Let's take two hypothetical scenarios:

In the first one, the victim is murdered because the criminal is a bigot and hated the victim for racial, sexual or other related reasons.

In the second one, the victim is murdered because the criminal thought it would be fun and exciting to kill someone.

I don't quite see how scenario one is any worse than scenario two, or why it deserves a harsher sentence.

19:37 / 13.02.02

Answer in three parts.

First, anti-gay hate crimes (and, I assume, many other kinds) are routinely a lot more brutal than crimes with other motivations. I don't have statistics for this, but a guy who goes to a beat with a baseball bat is likely to do a lot more damage than someone who gets in a fight in a pub or mugs someone.

Second, hate crimes aren't just crimes against individuals, they are crimes against populations - they are designed to terrorise particular communities, to show them their place, to keep them in the closet/bedroom/their part of town.

Third, many perpetrators of hate crimes think they're doing the right thing. They get the message from family, friends, society, the cops, etc., that gay people (etc.) have no rights and deserve a good beating. When a series of gay-bashings in a NSW suburb escalated into the firebombing of the gay community centre, everyone - from cops to gay activists - agreed it was because the young guys doing it weren't getting the message, from anywhere, that what they were doing was wrong. The government does need to send a message that it is wrong, does matter, and that hate crimes are particularly despicable and should be punished accordingly.

02:54 / 14.02.02

I don't see why the first point should matter, because the law already punishes the more brutal crimes more severely. At least they should. And if they don't then brutality can be measured in more ways than the motivation of the assailant.

The second point makes more sense; I hadn't thought about it before.

The Return Of Rothkoid

08:31 / 14.02.02

<rot>
Crunchy; where were the firebombings?
</rot>

19:34 / 14.02.02

quote:Originally posted by SMatthewStolte:
I don't see why the first point should matter, because the law already punishes the more brutal crimes more severely. At least they should.

In the UK, there's a legal defence commonly used in cases where one man has killed another, the Homosexual Defence. Claim the other man 'came on' in a manner which was unwelcome/unexpected and a murder charge is commonly reduced to manslaughter, at the very least. Even in crimes of extreme brutality, this is considered a very successful defence strategy...

15:17 / 15.02.02

First, I'd have to agree with Matthew that in such a circumstance, brutality would become the issue as far as sentencing goes.

Second, I would state that our criminal law system should not be concerned with whether a crime is designed to terrorize a certain community, because we possess no way of measuring the actual damage done to the aforementioned community. In addition, we are forced to play mental games in order to determine why the criminal commited the crime. This makes the law even more subjective than it is already, which is in my opinion, a bad thing.

Third, it's pretty obvious even to the most backward redneck, at least in the US, that if you attack someone for any reason, there are going to be legal repercussions. I would say that fifty years in jail for killing someone who is gay is not much more of a deterent than fourty years in jail for killing some who is gay. The best way to show people that this won't be tolerated is to enforce our existing laws.