We admit it’s a lost cause in our Balkanized world in which humanity recedes as the number and the type of victims become specified ad infinitum. Nonetheless, we feel constrained to protest the ever growing popularity of hate crime laws. Between them and lower crime rates, there is no continuity.
Hate crime laws are alive and well in Britain. Has that lowered the crime rate? What about France? Tragically, four Jews and other minorities were gunned down in cold blood by a pro-Palestinian extremist. Hate crime laws did not stop him. Yet, it is all the rage in France today to figure out just what kind of post-Toulouse legislation to push. How about none?
“In Western Europe we have the legislation we need: Murder and incitement are illegal,” said Mike Whine of the Community Security Trust, the defense agency of Britain’s Jewish community. “We need better application of existing laws. We need to ban more hate preachers from entering our countries, for instance.”
Whine is right. So is Bruno de Lille, a Belgian minister from the Flemish Green Party. “It’s often ineffective and jeopardizes basic values and liberties in a manner disproportionate to the contribution to collective security,” he said of hate crime laws.
Supposedly, hate crime laws deter crimes. We don’t know of any falsifiable method by which this claim can be measured. Supposedly, hate crime laws send a comforting message to minorities that society is sensitive to their status. We don’t mean to sound insensitive, but so what? After all, isn’t the true determinant of a minority’s comfort zone in society the actual crime rate? Less crime, more comfort. So it comes around to the same question: Do hate crime laws decrease crime? It’s an untestable claim.
Last week, a swastika was painted on a Colorado Springs synagogue. First, it was classified as a crime. Then it was classified as a hate crime. We fail to see the benefit. What’s wrong is wrong. If caught, convicted and sentenced, a criminal serves time in jail. Jail is jail. That seems blatant enough.
What is not blatant is the ever increasing number of classifications of people who need to be protected under hate crime legislation. That accomplishes the opposite of what is intended. It pulverizes society into smaller and smaller subsets. As we say, humanity recedes. John Donne recedes with it.
Copyright © 2012 by the Intermountain Jewish News
