Hate Crimes Hurt More

Abstract

Constitutional questions about hate crime laws in the United States were settled in the early 1990s. Yet, critics persist in arguing that the laws punish “improper thinking.” In this context, this article addresses the question of the justification of punishing motivation—or bias—behind hate crimes when the type of expression and the thought behind it used to indicate motivation are largely protected. There has been considerable legal scholarship on this question but little empirical investigation of how supporters of legislation respond to the question. The article draws from in-depth interviews carried out with a purposive sample of “elite” informants in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1999. A key theme that emerged was that alleged greater harms inflicted by hate crimes—over and above the harms inflicted by the same underlying but otherwise motivated crimes—justify greater punishment. A conceptualization is provided of alleged harms involved.

Penalty Enhancement for Hate Crimes: An Economic Analysis

“…Note the similarities between (8) and (10). Taking the possibility of socially wasteful avoidance expenditures into account leads to a condition that closely resembles our earlier formal characterization of Harel and Parchomovsky's FPP without, however, relying on fairness considerations.…”

“…233f). A more empirically oriented view is provided by Iganski (2001). 6 Of course, if the harm inflicted on primary victims by bias-motivated crimes is greater, as suggested by the empirical findings of McDevitt et al (2001), this would simply reinforce our argument.…”

“…In their model, individuals can commit an act that causes harm h to society. If an individual commits this offense, she is detected with probability p and bears a (monetary) sanction s. 10 An individual decides to commit an offense if the illegal gain b exceeds the expected sanction ps.…”

“…Thus, in general, it will be socially optimal to raise s B relative to s A , as there is a larger social gain from inducing Bs to reduce their avoidance activities. As a consequence, it may be the case that some bias-motivated crimes that would not incur penalty enhancement by the condition in Section 2 should do so according to (10) because penalty enhancements reduce the incentives for Bs to avoid As for fear of victimization, thereby foregoing valuable trading opportunities.…”

“…13 This assumption, which is intended to capture the idea of bias against Bs in the selection of victims, entails that: 10 Their results can easily be extended to the case of nonmonetary sanctions; note that we assume costly punishment in the analysis that follows. 11 A more general formulation, in which Bs can attack As as well as As attacking Bs, can be developed, but does not lead to significantly different conclusions.…”