From: smorine@nyx.cs.du.edu (Suzanne Morine)
Newsgroups: co.politics
Subject: Re: What is a "hate crime"?
Date: 1 Jan 93 18:46:40 GMT
Distribution: co
Organization: University of Denver, Dept. of Math & Comp. Sci.

gary@isis.cgd.ucar.edu (Gary Strand) writes:

>  I've read several reports in the Rocky Mountain News, as well as on the
>  radio and TV, that "hate crimes" against gays have greatly escalated since
>  Nov. 3. An article in today's RMN referred to "bias incidents" as well.

>  What I would like to know is how "hate crime" and "bias incident" are de-
>  fined. Someone who is in favor of certain acts being defined in these terms
>  is a person I'd like to hear from.

Note: the following are my impressions.  I don't know about this stuff in
the kind of activist, into-the-details way you're looking for.

My impression is that the *clear-cut* examples of such things both (1) have
no other crime involved, and (2) involve bias insults.  For examples, a
swastika is sprayed on someone's car, eggs are pelted on cars parked outside
of a meeting place, people are beaten up by attackers who shout bias insults
at them, a person jaywalking sees a car veer around the corner to just miss
them and shout a slur out the window.  Clearly, the actions were done to
terrorize someone, as opposed to being a result of another crime.

>  PS -- Two of the "bias incidents" reported by the News were car burglaries,
>  the "bias incident" being added because the two cars happened to have "No
>  on 2" stickers as well as being owned by lesbians. I suggest that these
>  reports of increasing "hate crimes" are similarly affected by these kinds
>  of guesswork.

The distinction gets fuzzy when other offenses are going on, like burgulary,
murder.  On the one hand, a group of thugs may beat up a <insertgroupnamehere>,
shouting slurs at him or her, calm down and find him/her unconscious and
decide to steal their wallet and car (and/or rape, kill).  On the other hand,
is a murdered man dead because the perpetrator hated his kind or because the
perpetrator had a grudge against him personally?  A murder investigation would
hopefully scare up any grudges.  If none surface and the crime doesn't seem to
be linked to anything else (like a robber killing in panic), hate-motivated
crime should be considered.  We don't want killers out on the street.  But 
murder is a more serious crime than a terrorizing act in itself.  So, what
about burgulary.  Still, we don't want burgulars out free either.  Do we
want people who terrorize people out on the street?  I doubt anyone will
say we want people who *habitually* do so out in society.  Imagine the bad
publicity for Denver ... ye gad, if you think the boycott is bad...  I
think anyone would agree it's necessary to note such incidents, looking for
patterns to get such habitual offenders off the street.  And if you have
videotape of someone just doing something like one of my examples... hey,
get him in court.

I'm rambling.  I'm going to go now.

I do want to note that I've never seen a simple burgulary suspected as a
hate crime simply because someone had a sticker on their car.  I have seen
"vandalized car" listed, but that doesn't involve stealing anything, and
could be the swastika example, the egg example.  You can generally tell
if someone was trying to steal - the contents of the glove compartment
are splayed out of it, or the radio is missing.

--
--Suzanne Morine          smorine@nyx.cs.du.edu
--"It is wonderful how much time good people spend fighting the devil.  If
--they would only expend the same amount of energy loving their fellow men,
--the devil would die in his own tracks of ennui."     Helen Keller
Newsgroups: co.politics