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Volume 3 Number 16 June
17, 2005 |
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What about hate crimes? People differ over how much weight we should give
motivation when punishing certain acts Actually, I had anticipated the question when I was writing last week's column about how we should account for motivation, and the question wasn't long in coming. "What about hate crimes?" someone wanted to know. Don't we want to consider the agent's motivation when dealing with acts we consider especially heinous? There seem to be two schools of thought. First, some people think that certain crimes, motivated by an extreme antipathy (or outright hatred) against a certain group, should receive special sanctions. So an assault against someone because they are a member of a certain identifiable group, traditionally the target of such assaults, should merit an extra punishment. Some laws have been passed to this effect. The other camp says that we should consider only the act itself and that we shouldn't make any determinations of punishment either according to the status of the person or group or according to the state of mind of the assailant. There seems to be some validity to the second point of view. If you punch me in the nose because I just happen to be standing next to you when the urge strikes, is the pain or damage to my nose any less than if you punch me because I'm black, gay, Jewish, or Muslim? And, if you follow my logic from last week, in which I argued that it's hard to know what someone's motivation really is -- and that the person may not even know what his own motivation is -- then it would seem to indicate that holding someone accountable for motivation is difficult. So, it would seem to follow that the second point of view, the anti-hate crime view, would be the correct one. However, I think both camps miss the point -- or, more precisely, the points -- that make so-called hate crimes different from other crimes. In both cases, the parties making the argument reduce acts to two factors: the specific set of actions involved, and the motivation of the person performing the act. Considering only the motivation and the specific set of actions constitutes a pretty narrow description of an "act," and acts that we consider widely divergent may share the same characteristics in that regard. At the very simplest level, suppose someone gets in a dispute with me over some money I owe them and, in an effort to get the money tempers flare and I get punched in the nose. Now, suppose I get into a prize fight and the other fighter, in an effort to win the prize money, punches me in the nose. Finally, suppose a mugger assaults me and in order to take my wallet punches me in the nose. Those are all vastly different acts, yet all share the same set of actions -- the punch in the nose -- and the same motivation -- getting the money. We would assign blame in each case differently. Why? Because there are other factors at work that characterize the acts taken as a whole. Let's expand on that and take it into the arena in which we consider more complex situations. Suppose that Max and Hank get into a dispute. It could be over money, over a woman, over a sense of "honor," whatever. Eventually fists fly and Max beats up Hank. Let's just call that, for lack of a better term, Acquaintance Assault, or Case A. Now suppose that Max and Hank don't know each other. Max is violence prone. We don't know why. Perhaps he had an unhappy childhood. Perhaps he's just not a very nice person. He waits in the bushes one night and assaults the first person who walks by. That person happens to be Hank. Let's call that, as many do, Random Assault, or Case B. Finally, suppose that Max and Hank don't know each other, but Max knows or suspects something about Hank -- he's gay, black, Jewish or Muslim -- and Max harbors some animosity against that group. Again, we don't know why -- just that he does. So Max lies in wait for Hank and beats him up, perhaps while yelling slurs and epithets that betray the nature of his animosity toward the entire group. Let's call this, again for lack of a better term, a Group-Targeted Assault, or Case C. In all three cases, the set of actions that make up the entire act is the same, more or less. The motivation may be different, or it may be the same. As I indicated last time, we don't really have a method to clearly determine what motivates a person. Slurs or epithets may indicate part of the assailant's frame of mind toward the victim, but there are many other motivating factors at work. But let's assume that the motivation in all three cases is the same, something that is entirely possible. In Case A, it could be Max's hatred of Hank. In Case B, it could just be Max's undifferentiated hatred of or anger toward society in general. And in Case C, it could be Max's hatred of the group to which Hank belongs. If all we were to consider were the set of actions and the motivation, this would seem to bolster the argument of those who argue against classifying certain acts as "hate crimes," because all three cases would seem to be the same. I don't think it's that simple. In my examples above, I resisted calling Case C a "hate crime," because I think this is another area where sloppy terminology has led us astray. The term "hate crime" leads us to think that what makes Case C different from A and B is the state of mind of the assailant. There are other factors at work. Each crime consists of many components, and while the set of actions is important, and motivation also is, but perhaps less so, we need to consider the effects on society and victims as well. Case A, acquaintance assault, may leave the victim beaten, humiliated and/or angry, but at least the victim knows why the assault took place and understands the motive of the attacker -- whether or not he agrees with it. The effect on the community is negligible. Most of us would think "Silly guys -- beating each other up over a gambling debt. I'm glad I don't hang around with people like that." We then go on about our business. Hank, for his part, may pay his debts more promptly or change the people with whom he associates. Case B leaves the victim feeling more helpless. Minding his own business and trying to stay out of trouble have gotten him nothing. There is a sense of violation in that he just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time -- through no fault of his own. The effect on the community is also more chilling. The idea is that any of us are potential victims. Protecting yourself against an attack like this is more difficult. You could, of course, lock yourself in the house, but then you're subject to a possible home invasion in which you could be assaulted. And the fact that we see a home invasion as a greater crime than just a random assault on someone on the street gives us a clue as to how the circumstances of the crime change its severity. Case C is even more chilling. On one hand it has some elements of the random crime, but, on the other hand, is overlaid with the idea that Hank, the victim, was targeted. He was assaulted not only because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, but also because he was -- or was perceived to be -- a member of a certain group. So, it was selective randomness. And that creates an added chilling factor for Hank and other members of the targeted group. The members of this group become the hunted, but in a depersonalized way. This creates an added insult. Hank was assaulted because of his membership in a group, not because of anything he did. We can't even say that he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, because very often the people perpetrating these crimes hunt down their victims -- laying in wait in minority neighborhoods, in areas with a high ethnic concentration, or outside gay bars. The effect on the community, at least the targeted community, is more intense. The idea that you have become the prey is not only frightening, but dehumanizing as well. In Case B, the random assault, everyone in the community is vulnerable. Everyone shares the unease. In Case C, only specific groups are vulnerable. The unease is not shared among the community at large, and that makes the vulnerability more frightening, because it increases the sense of isolation. In terms of the effects of the crime on members of the community, each of these cases constitutes a dramatically different act -- and that difference springs from more than the set of actions involved and the state of mind of the assailant. Laws are basically ways of the community saying what it will and won't tolerate. The laws that govern Case A are much looser than those in Case B. Very often, police won't prosecute acquaintance assault unless it happens publicly and they witness the attack, or unless the victim swears out a complaint. In Random assaults, the police will act, and they will do so to allay the fears of the general population -- fears that spring from the shared vulnerability and shared sense that anyone could become a victim. Police will aggressively work to solve these crimes. So-called hate crimes, I would argue, deserve their own classification, because they have a much more chilling effect on certain segments of the population -- and this effect is often in conjunction with other insults suffered by the group. Drawing up laws designed to prevent such crimes, or at least punish them more severely, is the way the community fulfills an obligation that many feel they have to protect the weak from the strong or the few from the many. So, I don't think that motivation matters so much. What matters in so-called hate crimes is that a person has been targeted not for what he has done -- or not even as a simple random victim -- but a specifically targeted and dehumanized member of a group. |
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© Copyright 2005 Carlton Vogt |