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This article appeared on today's Guardian website and makes worrying and disturbing news.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/26/transphobic-tra...
Transphobic hate crimes up in UK
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Comments
Perhaps...
If there are more Trans people visible in the community then it stands to reason that the fools and idiots out there will find someone to hate.
The thing that saddens me was the incident of the children heckling the Trans person on Suffolk.
But, as we have found out with Gay and Lesbian people that the more of them in the community who are open about their sexuality, the more accepting the community becomes (in most places that is).
Very small numbers
There may be an increase, but these figures are incredibly small compared to most other crimes, eg 2 million crimes of violence. I'd rather be hated than assaulted!
I don't usually attack The Guardian, but I think they are up to the usual press trick of magnifying a tiny threat to the point where people are fearful to walk the streets.
I think
they're simply reporting a press release from Galop a LGBT charity/pressure group, but the Guardian is well known for its support of transgender and gay people.
Angharad
Can we please not use that term?!
Can we please not use the term "hate crime"? I don't have a problem with the term itself as I would agree with the sentiment of why it occurred.
The issue with the term "Hate Crime" is it usually comes with the baggage of wanting some law passed that gets "Hate Crime" pressed in as a legal punishment. It's a lazy way for prosecutors to tack on more years to a sentence instead of doing the extra legwork to really throw the perpetrator of the crime under the bus. The brutality of the crime itself should be enough to add extra weight to a sentence.
What about a person who isn't GLBT and receives a brutal death at the hands of someone else?! Should they not receive a similar sentence due to the severity of the crime? I'm not referring to them even yelling racial or some sort of gendered epithet at the person which makes their dislike clear. Rather the coroner and others can examine the body, its wounds and draw appropriate, severe conclusions.
Also the term "hate crime" does start to get too uncomfortable to me, coming close to the term "thought crime". I realize "hate crime" sees action come to fruition but it doesn't seem to me like too small a step from that.
Meaning, intent and semantics
Hate crime is like the difference between first and second degree murder. The law makes a distinction between murder committed by pre-meditated intent and murder committed in the heat of the moment. Shall we eliminate that difference to avoid the idea that some prosecutor just adds pre-meditation to the indictment to get a little extra push on the verdict?
Is pre-meditated murder a thought crime?
Walking through an unlocked door might be trespass but if you enter with intent to steal, it's breaking and entering even if the door was unlocked. Is that a thought crime?
Passing government secrets to unauthorized individuals is a crime, but if it is done with intent to cause harm to the state, it's treason.
Slapping someone around is assault and battery but if it is done to intimidate and instill fear, then in many jurisdictions it is a more serious crime.
It's a recognized tenet of law that intent matters. Hate crimes are just the enactment of this distinction. Yes, it's conceivable that in the hands of an unscrupulous prosecutor or judge they could be used to punish thought crime. But the lack of hate crime legislation in the past has never prevented this sort of abuse of authority.
And getting a conviction for hate crime in any fair courtroom is certainly not an lazy way to tack on more years of sentence. It requires more effort than simply ignoring context and intent.
It's wise to be reluctant to enact more hate crime legislation in the same way it is wise to be slow to criminalize any act that might be handled better in some other way. But hate crimes do exist... ought they not be punished for what they are?
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.
Intent
I sort of know quite a bit about UK law...
Intent is indeed the thing, and there is a yawning gulf between 'negligent' and 'deliberate/intentional' that many people miss. For example, a lot of cyclists get rather upset when a motorist kills a rider and then gets a very low sentence. The reason is 'intent'. If he intended to kill the cyclist, thatis murder. If he simply drove carelessly and the cyclist died as a result, that isn't. English law has three main levels of bad driving:
Careless--falls short of the standard of a competent driver.
Reckless--drives without considering the safety of others.
Dangerous--drives knowing that it is dangerous for other road users, and does it deliberately.
All of that is intent-based, and I will gloss over the fact that prosecutors usually go for the easy option of 'careless' even in the worst cases. Now, when it comes to hate crime, I think it is a valid definition. The message goes out that it is unacceptable to target a group because you hate them, and at the same time (allowing for the laziness of prosecutors) it shows that if you DO target the group in question your sentence is increased. It is, in effect, an extension of laws against discrimination.
I think
transgender cyclists ought to be a protected species.
Angharad
Umm
Hate crime laws are there to give us at least an illusion of protection. They rarely work in practice, but they stop a lot of people from outright murdering us for a simple manslaughter charge. LGBT aren't the only targets of hate crimes, racism also is (though that is also rarely recognized) and we need these illusions in place to at least deter some people from outright murder.
I don't know about you, but if the country I was in stopped using hate crimes, I'd be on the first plane out of here.
I know who I am, I am me, and I like me ^^
Transgender, Gamer, Little, Princess, Therian and proud :D
I get what your saying in
I get what your saying in that all crimes should be considered equally (for example, assault against any individual is deplorable) but if the motivation behind the assault is because an individual was targeted for a specific reason (gender identity, race, etc.) then it seems to me that it's very sensible that the motivation should be considered by the police, courts etc and if that requires additional sentencing and hopefully targeted rehabilitation then that's got to be a good thing. For my mind this has been an area where coming from a weak posiition the UK government has been pretty good in recent years (https://www.gov.uk/government/policies/reducing-and-preventi...).
"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."
I'm sorry but if I were
I'm sorry but if I were murdered, brutally, because someone dislikes me because I'm GLBT and they got a more severe sentence compared to someone else in a similar circumstance who was straight, this is where I take issue.
My existence and status as GLBT doesn't make me especially special here.
Not the point
Not at all the point. The point here is not the victim, it is the motivation of the perpetrator. It is in society's interest to consider the motivation in a crime. And it is more heinous to kill someone because they are black, gay, a woman, a foreigner, a disabled person, a member of a certain ethnic or religious group than it is to kill someone because of a bar fight gone wrong.
Hate is anti-society in it's most basic formulation.
Hugs,
Erin
= Give everyone the benefit of the doubt because certainty is a fragile thing that can be shattered by one overlooked fact.