should those who commit hate crimes be punished more harsh? not punished at all? what are your takes on hate crime? should we approach this matter and educate?

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punish more harshly...perhaps. Not punish...no. Educate...attempt.
The fact remains that hate crimes would exist whether or not the perpretrator is aware of racial equality, open mindness, etc. How you approach the education comes into question. The feeling of racial superiority in racists is, more often than not, inheirent in their values and beliefs. Thus, if people make an effort to "educate" those who possess such opinions, they could quite possibly react against the education, trying to speak out against those who are infringing upon their set of personal beliefs. Thus education in this could actually cause a hate crime to occur.

However, this is just a case scenario, I'm all for "education" but one must keep in mind that there are certain, not so desirable, byproducts of such a movement.

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Last edited by Crazydeb8ter on 10-24-2002 at 03:46 AM

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i'll put more thought into this later, i haven't read any of the replies so if i repeat, then that's why.

All right, they should never be punished harsher. Why? because it's too subjective to even begin to be near fair. We punish people for the actions they do, not what they think. Since when did court become the thought police? We can never know with absolute certainty how a person thinks. Even if they admit it, they could be putting on a front, a possibility. If we can't know with a good deal of certainty that it was a hate crime, then we shouldn't tack on longer harsher punishments simply for the way we think they may have thought. We shouldn't punish people for the way they think. With this mentality, we'd leave ourselves open to a whole lot of flawed precedents to be set in this field.

Once again, we aren't the thought police, we can never know what another person is thinking, and we simpy don't punish people on what they think...why should we? We've all had evil thoughts, but punishing evil thoughts will never allow them to change, at least make it very hard. It could just be a phase, maybe not. Maybe they were brought up that way to think that way, and they haven't realized it's wrong yet. Punishing thoughts is a terrible advance on our court systems...i don't like it. And i'll end with a cliche "a murder is a murder, is a murder." Just because the thoughts were mal formed and evil doesn't make it anything more...if anything it's just an evil murder...ok. so it's an evil murder. But they didn't do anything else wrong besides murder someone. This is just an example.

wow, i wrote more than i thought i would.

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quote:

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Originally posted by PsychoSnowman
All right, they should never be punished harsher. Why? because it's too subjective to even begin to be near fair. We punish people for the actions they do, not what they think. Since when did court become the thought police? We can never know with absolute certainty how a person thinks. Even if they admit it, they could be putting on a front, a possibility. If we can't know with a good deal of certainty that it was a hate crime, then we shouldn't tack on longer harsher punishments simply for the way we think they may have thought. We shouldn't punish people for the way they think. With this mentality, we'd leave ourselves open to a whole lot of flawed precedents to be set in this field.

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__________________
ni pour ni contre; ça m'est égal

"The weight of this sad time we must obey,/ Speak what we feel, not what we ought to say./ The oldest hath borne most; we that are young/ Shall never see so much, nor live so long."
King Lear (V.3.300-304)

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i totally agree wit PsychoSnowman on this
its like the Red Scare,wat ur goin 2 punish someone cause they hav the right 2 think the way they want 2? its also impossible to completely prove cause no one can read minds. its goin 2 be another witch hunt. for those who r KKK, Neo Nazi, etc. members its ur ideas its the way u think. just cause a majority thinks an idea is wrong doesnt mean it is. personally yea i dont agree wit wat some groups think but u kno wat its harder to change the way people think in a country then to take it over.

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quote:

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Since when did court become the thought police?

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anyway as the others said, our thoughts are our own. its a basic freedom. a government cannot deal more punishment because of a thought, it has to give punishment according to the degree of action taken.

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