Talk:Hate crime

Topic
Proposition: "Hate crimes are thought crimes"

Agree? Disagree? Doesn't matter? Other? Lurker 14:02, 13 February 2008 (EST)


 * It's not the particular thought that is the crime. It is the action (stupidly) taken stemming from that thought that is criminal.  --Edgerunner  76[[Image:Buddy christ.jpg|50px]] 14:10, 13 February 2008 (EST)
 * That's right. It's only the Mad Emperor of CP who claims to know what atheistic liberals are thinking. PoorEd 14:47, 13 February 2008 (EST)
 * Disagree. You have to actually DO something, not just think it, for it to be a 'hate crime'.  --SockOfGulik 15:53, 13 February 2008 (EST)
 * Concur with the above. Clarify: The difference between killing someone just because and killing someone just because they are black is in thought alone, but they are different crimes and have different punishments. (Correct me if I'm misunderstanding how hate crimes work, however).Lurker 22:01, 13 February 2008 (EST)
 * Pretty much, yeah. The idea being that, say, mugging someone for his wallet because he's wearing a nice suit isn't a 'hate crime', bit chaining someone behind a car and dragging him to death because he's a homosexual is. --Gulik 23:40, 13 February 2008 (EST)

You can commit the same crime, but be more severely punished because of what you were thinking. It's clearly a form of thought crime. I didn't think people disputed that. &mdash; Sincerely, Neveruse / Talk / Block 13:50, 8 June 2010 (UTC)

Let's try the reverse. Imagine someone who steals food because they haven't eaten for days versus someone who steals food because they just don't feel like paying. Should the starving person face the same punishment as the person who just didn't want to pay? It's been part of our common law since almost the inception that intention matters. That's part of the reason we have judges in the first place and the reason why penalties for breaking the law are listed as "up to X years in jail and/or $X,000" instead of just a straight number. In other words, if you're arguing against hate crime on the basis that it's impossible to know intention then there needs to be far-reaching changes in almost all our laws (which is not to say that it isn't correct to do so, just that one needs to realize the implication of their actions). Perceptron (talk) 06:51, 27 September 2010 (UTC)


 * In my understanding, there are at least three practical justifications for hate crimes to have their own designation. One is enforcement. If local law enforcement, or juries, or judges, have a certain bias against a group, they may not treat hate crimes against that group as seriously as they should. Hate crime legislation may be able to patch this problem. For example, in the US, federal authorities can be brought in on cases that local authorities do not pursue.


 * Another is to allow hate crimes, as a social problem, to be more easily tracked and studied.


 * Another reason is somewhat more related to philosophical justice; it can be argued that hate crimes are crimes not only upon one individual, but upon a community. If a crime makes a whole community of people fearful of living their everyday lives, above and beyond a typical fear of crime, or if a pattern of crime is actually calculated to oppress or drive out a specific group of people, those hate crimes are doing more damage overall, and involve a great deal more animus, than a similar crime wave of unrelated, sporadic events. If the KKK intentionally sets out to rid a community of black people, that's not really the same sort of phenomenon as your typical crime of passion. --Quantheory (talk) 13:28, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

UK laws - help
So I was reading wiki to get some of the various national laws, and the UK confused me a bit. Not in what they are doing, but in what to call it. (US has "federal and state"). It seems there is a broad and not very specific hate crime law that applies to the entire UK, and then each (and here is what i don't understand) lower tier of government can and do have more specific laws. I don't know if these are "districts" or nations or what. I know, I know, typical American doesn't know how the world works. :-) Help would be appreciated.  for what it's worth, here's the wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_crime#European_Union.En attendant Godot  16:33, 23 August 2011 (UTC)

South Park's Opinion
South Park episode discusses why the term "Hate Crime" is stupid but also takes it a step further in saying that all races should be treated equally under law. Of course, the latter is debatable. Then again, proving there was a racist intention usually goes along the lines of this: the victim is black + evil white guy = hate crime. It sounds like a thought-crime but the creation of the term “hate crime” seems to have good intentions. 01:07, 7 December 2016 (UTC)

The term Hate Crime is completely redundant
Most crimes are based on hatred of one form or another. Now domestic terrorism on the other hand is much more accurate. --Boterham (talk) 01:19, 1 July 2021 (UTC)