Hate Crime Laws Since the United States of America and long with the whole world is filled with diversity there will always be conflicts about believes and feelings towards each other. Many people have their believes and keep them to themselves. Then there are the type of people that feel they have to put their believes into actions and hurt others or destroy things to get their point across. These believes that hurt and destroy others things and lives are called hate crimes. Hate crimes are becoming more and more common everyday. FBI statistics show that the frequency hate crimes in America are increasing as the frequency regular crimes in America have been decreasing.
With the increase in hate crimes in America, minority groups are starting to become the prey of the beasts who commit these awful crimes. So the minority groups (Asians, African Americans, Jewish people, Homosexuals, and others) have been pushing to have hate crime laws passed to protect them from violence and ridicule. The laws that are in affect now are only slightly protective of the minorities in hate crimes. The laws that are in state right now say that a hate crime offender can only be prosecuted for their crimes if they are prohibiting the minority or victim of the hate crime from a “federally protected right.” Such as attending school, voting and etc. The victims of hate crimes do not think that these laws are very strict. The victims are demanding newer stricter laws.
The victims or minorities want these newer stricter laws because basically they have no protection from violence. The old laws basically just state that if you are prohibiting the person from doing something you are at fault. Well the minorities want these stiffened and they want them to be harsher. An example of what the minorities want is any act done against anyone with intent to cause bodily harm or death because the person was part of a minority group will carry the fine of being federally prosecuted and with that there is the chance of the death penalty. With making the laws more strict the victims of hate crimes will be gaining more security and more protection from having violence and abuse taken out on them. There really is no opposition to making the laws stricter because it seems that most of the hate crimes that are happening are mostly random acts and just young kids creating stupid acts.
Although there are the groups out there like the Skinheads and the KKK which create acts against people who tend to be different then them. These people look at the making these laws more strict as being a threat to what they are about. Most likely they are thinking that these laws will not let them say what they mean and express their views to the world. They will want clauses added into the laws and other things to make sure that they will not be des criminated against.
When I started writing this paper I was pro strengthening the hate crimes laws. When I ended writing this paper I stand in the same position I started in. There is no way people should be hurt because of their sexual preference, religion, or race. This country and the world definitely is in trouble because we can not seem to get around the fact that some of us our different.
If we can not accept the worlds diversity then there will never be an end to hate crimes no matter what laws are passed. Once we understand that a person is a person no matter what race, sexual preference, or religion they are that will be the cure for hate crimes. So I think there should be more education of our young children on different things and less coverage of hate crimes and bad news in the media.