Federal, State, and Local Hate Crime Laws

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Table of Contents

Introduction
Biasness and Formation of Bias Units in Police Departments
Prosecution Problems
Selective Prosecution
Conclusion
Reference List

Introduction

Federal, state, and local hate crime laws were passed to satisfy political and symbolic needs but not to fill gaps in criminal law, sentencing law, or criminal procedure. Nevertheless, once these laws are on the books, police and prosecutors must decide how to enforce them. Hate crimes are habitually described by the law of a state as ones that are characterized by harassment, intimidations, or physical mischief. They stimulated by chauvinism that is not in favor of an individual’s tribe, color, religious conviction, country of origin, way of life, gender orientation, or physical or psychological disability. Laws differ by countries. If the law provides for hate offenses, the descriptions of hate crime punishments differ. This paper therefore gives a detailed description and analysis of the challenges and enforcement dilemmas of hate crime laws experienced by several bodies of the government. Specifically, the paper singles out biasness, problems that the judges face during prosecutions, and finally selective prosecutions as some of the challenges and enforcement dilemmas of hate crimes.

Biasness and Formation of Bias Units in Police Departments

The local and the federal states approved the laws on hate crime for the satisfaction of political and symbolic requirements not to seal and fill the spaces in criminal decree, sentencing decree, or any form of criminal modus operandi. On the other hand, once the regulations are on the manuscripts, the prosecutors and the law enforcers should find a way and settle on how to bring them in operation. Back in 1988, the Associates of the Abt and the NOBLE (National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Executives) made public a joint statement that recommended vast departments of law enforcers to dedicate extra reserves to bias crime survey. The statement sought to set up bias units, allocate liaison officers to the communities that were affected, and generate activities that are meant to encourage sufferers to give testimonies to bias crimes. According to Jacobs and Potter (1998), a number of law enforcing departments are smaller. Thus, they require resources and personnel to set up specialized divisions that will concentrate on the biased crimes. A recommendation was done by the Abt Report to the small departments of law enforcers to form detailed reporting practices for hate crimes. A good number of law enforcing departments were a bit larger, for instance, the ones in Boston, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, which have formed dedicated bias divisions. Even in these larger law-enforcing departments, the units that deal with bias crimes are quite small mainly involving four to eighteen law enforcers. Therefore, such units can make no difference. What specialized tactics should the law enforce to deal with bias cases wholly or chiefly when handling hate crimes? Jacobs and Potter (1998) advises that it is predominantly a difficult challenge if the amount of hate crimes particularly serious hate crimes in any given jurisdiction is minimal as it is usually realistic.

Prosecution Problems

As much as it is possible to settle the issue of hate crimes, no agency or jurisdiction has filed reports that deal with prosecution and temperament facts on hate crimes. It is not possible to obtain studies that are available on the matter. Some jurisdictions have started to take in hand this information breach. For instance, the leader of the civil liberties division of the Minnesota Attorney General’s Office has commenced an assessment of all attorneys of the region asking them to account on bias trials or hearings, nature, demographics of the sufferers and persons responsible, and insights of if the decrees on hate crimes are helpful. In the same way, California’s Attorney General demanded that region and municipality attorneys take on the compilation of figures on bias accuses filed with passions being entered during the year of 1995. On the other hand, on or after spring 1997, no statistics had come into view.

A good number of the persons who prosecute have had minimal knowledge when it comes to taking legal action on hate crimes. However, quite a number of large organizations of the prosecutors who prosecute in metropolitan areas, for instance, in San Diego, and Sacramento have particular bureaus or prosecutors who are specialized in the handling of prosecutions that relate to hate crimes (Jacobs and Potter, 1998). The office of the district Attorney in Chicago set up a council that dealt with hate crimes that comprised business representatives, police officers, spiritual, and community associations. The Council was relinquished a great deal of authority over enforcement policy. In 1995, the council made public a guide that was used by prosecutors who prosecuted hate crimes that obtained in hand such matters as administering bias cases, settling on whether to lay the blame involving the victim in the legal action, conducting annulled dire, and lastly bargaining for an appeal.

Selective Prosecution

Selective prosecution is among the key hate crime dilemmas that symbolize that the district legal representative or the prosecutor settles on which legal actions to pursue and the ones to ignore. They also settle on the kind of charges to put on record. In a number of scenarios, this challenge is for the most part about convenience. However, there is constantly a constituent of politics engaged. On cases of hate crimes, the political factor grows vastly in a potential trial for the reason that the hate crime sheds an offense in opposition to a person or small collections of people as an unlawful activity against a whole demographic division. In an intellect, these offenses are consequently eminent to something imminent in terms of conflict. The group of the casualty becomes the distressed party while the groupings of the suspect get the reaction that they are cooperatively being tried. In California, according to Altschiller (2005), this kind of prosecution is the system of the day where the district legal representatives unconstitutionally and unlawfully take legal action European Americans in contrast to the contribution to hate crimes that the European Americans are responsible of doing. In quite a number of jurisdictions including the County of Santa Clara that is located in California, European Americans found themselves being put on trial at about a ninety percentage rate of every part of trials for hate crimes that were much hefty in relation to the European American contribution of definite hate crimes. A good case in point of how this selective prosecution is conducted can be seen in the bureau of the Santa Clara County District Attorney as suggested by Gerstenfeld (2003). The bureau made the change in the end of the year 1995 and the start of 1996 from putting into effect hate crime laws without prejudice. They were to embark on processing allegations according to ethnic groups and sexual categories. In 1995, the office DA put on trial seven suspected hate crime occurrences. The eight defendants consisted of two males who were Hispanic by origin, two males who were black Americans, one black American woman, and three white people. The fatalities included two women who were Vietnamese, one man who was an East Indian, three white men, and a Korean man. In 1996, on the other hand, the office DA put to trial nine suspected hate crime occurrences with every one of the defendants being either men who were either white or Hispanic or just one victim who was a white man. The similar pattern went on in the course of 1997 for which this information was obtained. The exposure and trials that represent European American hate crime doers are excessively an influential instrument for the movement of denouncement in opposition to European Americans particularly youthful European American males.

Conclusion

When it comes to the enactment of hate crime laws and enforcing them, the mandated people have faced a good number of challenges and dilemmas because a number of crimes that are believed to be biased are rare and almost impossible to be detected by the law enforcing agents when they patrol. On the other hand, crimes that are characterized as unbiased on a low-level, for instance, vandalism and graffiti are considered notorious and hard to solve. Some of the trials that are conducted on hate crimes raise queries concerning the admissibility of evidence that concerns the principles, beliefs, and nature of the defendant. Finally, discovering a variety of fresh sanctions for the committers of hate crime initiates one into unexplored waters. Most of the officials who run the prisons are not comfortable about the proposals that they are supposed to try to instruct or propagandize the prisoners. Until now, in cases or scenarios of individuals who engaged in the committing hate crimes, ethical re-education plays a key role to the development of the industry in an attempt to curb the aforementioned dilemmas and challenges.

Reference List

Altschiller, D. (2005). Hate crimes: A reference handbook. Santa Barbara, Calif: ABC- CLIO.

Gerstenfeld, B. (2003). Hate crimes: Causes, controls, and controversies. Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage Publication.

Jacobs, B, & Potter, K. (1998). Hate crimes: Criminal law & identity politics. New York: Oxford University Press.

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Federal, State, and Local Hate Crime Laws

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