Hate Crimes Investigated

**Insert Law & Order tune here**

So, what exactly is a hate crime? I mean, what qualifications must be met in order for a "crime" to be called a "hate crime"? And is calling a "crime" a "hate crime" another way to discriminate against the parties that would be placed in the category of people able to have a "hateful crime" committed against them?? This is all very confusing..and in a lot of cases controversial stuff.\

A hate crime is defined as:

"criminal offense against a person or property motivated in whole or in part by an offender's bias against a race, religion, disability, ethnic origin or sexual orientation."

Whereas a plain ol crime is defined as:

1

: an act or the commission of an act that is forbidden or the omission of a duty that is commanded by a public law and that makes the offender liable to punishment by that law; especially : a gross violation of law

Now, where the controversy comes in....

Why do the crimes committed against certain groups have to be considered a "hate crime"?? Doesn't that increase the instance of discrimination? Doesn't that make them even more of an outcast?? I personally do not think so because the punishment for a hate crime is more severe than that of a regular crime, since a hate crime is driven by hatred...but then...don't you commit a crime against a person BECAUSE of hatred..or at least a strong dislike??

And that's where we get into the woman issue. Why is gender not included? Aren't rapes hate crimes? Especially if you do it more than once??

Gender was not included in the original Hate Crimes Statistics Act  and women advocates have begun to speak out about the alarming rate of violent physical and sexual assaults against women.  A lot of the time, women are blamed for the violence committed toward them, but it is obvious that some of these attacks are not random; women are attacked primarily because they are a woman..therefore, they meet the criteria to be included in the act.  They are being attacked based on bias. 

Take this case:

"One of the most horrific examples of a gender-based hate crime is the 2006 shooting of 10 young Amish girls at the Georgetown Amish School in Bart Township, Pa., about 60 miles west of Philadelphia. Armed with three guns, two knives, and 600 rounds of ammunition, Charles Carl Roberts IV, 32, burst into the one-room schoolhouse and shot the girls at close range in the back of the head. Five were killed: Lena Miller, 7, and Mary Liz Miller, 8; Naomi Ebersol, 7; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; and Marian Fisher, 13. Five others were seriously wounded. Although Roberts lived in the area, he was not Amish, and reportedly did not know his victims personally. After Roberts arrived at the school, he separated the boys, ages 6 to 13, from the girls, and allowed the boys to leave. He then lined the girls against a blackboard and bound their feet with wire ties and plastic handcuffs before shooting them. Local authorities reported that "[A]pparently there was some sort of an issue in his past that he, for some reason, wanted to exact revenge against female victims."

This was clearly an act of HATE against girls/women because he purposefully separated the boys from the girls, let the boys leave, and shot the girls. What sense does this make? Of course, just like most of the other mass murderers, the man responsible killed himself before he could have been brought to justice.

Now, back to the point I mentioned earlier about how calling a crime a hate crime can in itself be discriminatory. I can see how that particular point can be made (see above), but there are such strict guidelines to qualify something as a hate crime. Say, for example, a man rapes a woman, but this is his forst time ever raping a woman.  In that particular instance, it would not be a hate crime. He would have to have been a repeat offender in order to get a greater charge associated with commitrted hate crimes. But then, is that fair to the one woman that he raped?? It can get so sticky!!