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Hate Crime Legislation as an Antidote to Hate Ideology
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 January 2025
Abstract
Given the prevalence of hate ideology, a concerted, multipronged effort to combat it clearly seems in order. In this essay, I explore whether hate crime legislation is a permissible and advisable component of this effort. In particular, I consider whether it is morally permissible to impose enhanced punishments upon criminals who select their victims at least in part because of an animus toward members of the group to which the victim belongs. Would it be permissible to punish more severely a White supremacist who attacks a person only because she is Black, for instance, or an anti-Semitic thief who selects her victims at least in part because they are Jewish? After sketching a preliminary defense of this type of hate crime legislation, I note some potential concerns, including vexing questions about the likely effects of imposing such laws under the present, nonideal circumstances in the United States.
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References
1 This information is available at the Southern Poverty Law Center’s website: https://www.splcenter.org.
2 “Frequently Asked Questions about Hate and Antigovernment Groups,” Southern Poverty Law Center, February 16, 2022, https://www.splcenter.org/20200318/frequently-asked-questions-about-hate-groups#hate%20group.
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5 The 2020 statistics are available at “2020 FBI Hate Crimes Statistics,” U.S. Department of Justice, https://www.justice.gov/crs/highlights/2020-hate-crimes-statistics. The 2019 statistics are available at “2019 FBI Hate Crimes Statistics Report,” U.S. Department of Justice, https://www.justice.gov/crs/highlights/FY-2019-Hate-Crimes. As a reviewer for this journal helpfully emphasizes, we do not know how many of these crimes involved violence against persons. The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a hate crime as a “criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender’s bias against a race, religion, disability, sexual orientation, ethnicity, gender, or gender identity.” “What We Investigate: Hate Crimes,” U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, https://www.fbi.gov/investigate/civil-rights/hate-crimes. According to this definition, a racially motivated criminal act of graffiti and a physical attack on a person would both qualify as a hate crime.
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