Do Hate Crime Laws Really Make A Difference?

Hate Crime Laws Racism and hate crimes have been a near constant in U.S life. From when having a slave was okay, to a rise in white supremacy groups: like the KKK, and on to today in everyday life. To solve this problem, our government created hate crime laws, where they then could punish those who persecuted different races, religions, and much more different groups of people. Are hate crime laws really necessary? Do they really make a difference? Hate crime laws are not necessary because hate crimes still happen despite the laws, the keep on expanding to include more laws, and lastly, crime should not be based on motives. The government created laws to put an end to hate crimes, and punish those who committed them. Yet, despite these many
Crimes are crimes. Hate crimes are horrible, yet do they really need a separate and more severe punishment, when all it is, is a crime? Shouldn’t and wouldn’t it be easier to just punish crimes the same depending on the degree of it? In Issues and controversies, critics of hate crime laws say, “Laws that treat bias motivated crimes differently than ordinary crimes create inequality in the justice system by punishing the same crimes in different ways. (Page 2)” Hate crimes don’t just happen to certain and particular group of people. It happens to a whole bunch of people, belonging to different minority groups. The whole U.S is made up of minority groups that we have been striving to include. Doug Mataconis in his article: “Should we eliminate “hate crime” laws?” states that “The designation of some groups as protected classes in hate crime laws create a political demand by others that they should also be included. Some laws define hate crimes to include attacks inspired not only by racial or religious bias but also by antipathy to veterans, disabled people, sexual minorities, and the elderly. As the list of protected groups gets longer and longer, the law may be approaching a situation in which every crime is a hate crime (Page 2).” As I said before, the U.S is made up of minorities. If we keep on adding minorities to the list, we are going to be putting all citizens
Shouldn’t they be punished the same because the crime that they committed was illegal, while freedom of speech is not? Everyone is entitled to their own thought, and the only time we are to judge them for it, is if they take action to that thought if it’s a bad one. “Critics cite “intimidation”, a category of hate crime that can amount to a few threating words, as an example of hate crime laws going too far. Law enforcement should concern themselves with criminal actions, not words (Issues and controversies, page 9).” So we should not be going off of what someone thought of the other person as they were committing the crime, but what damage they caused, what action they took. The words that those who have committed these hate crimes do not change what they have done, or the actions that they have made. “On some level, the idea of “hate crimes” seems nonsensical. After all, if someone is assaulted, raped, or murdered, it really doesn’t matter why they did commit the act, and it’s not intuitive that we should treat some crimes differently because the person who commits them is motivated by animus toward someone based on their race, gender, or religion (Doug Mataconis, page 2).” If what