For those interested in a wide-ranging debate about hate crime, this fundamental fact needs to be grappled with: hate crime is about policing people’s beliefs and thoughts. Whichever level of hate crime is engaged (offence, aggravation or sentencing), the thrust of a hate crime is that the offender is punished for behaviours that stem from his beliefs and thoughts.
This raises two problems: first, why is a crime committed with a mind full of racial hatred or homophobia worse than a crime committed out of greed, vengeance or sheer wanton malice? Proponents of hate crime usually point to the social harm caused by racism or homophobia, etc. This is unconvincing and is difficult to square with the fact that hate-crime protections have expanded as hatreds towards the target groups have decreased across society.
But the alleged concern with social harm draws attention to the second problem with hate crime: the proper limits of criminal law. In short, parliament should not enact crimes or pass sentences that are motivated by a desire to make people hold different beliefs and thoughts. Freedom of speech and conscience, and the ability to act on those beliefs, should not be curtailed unless, to use John Stuart Mill’s classic statement of liberalism, it is for self-protection or to prevent harm to others.
Take the recent case of Jacqueline Woodhouse, who became notorious in 2012 after her seven-minute racist rant on a late-night tube train went viral on YouTube. Among her profusion of swear words were insults like ‘you Africans take our council flats’ and ‘our country has been overtaken by people like you’. Woodhouse was so drunk she could not remember the incident but, after recognising herself on YouTube, she handed herself into the police. She pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment and was jailed for 21 weeks.
Woodhouse was imprisoned for expressing her thoughts!!!
Read the full article - here
This raises two problems: first, why is a crime committed with a mind full of racial hatred or homophobia worse than a crime committed out of greed, vengeance or sheer wanton malice? Proponents of hate crime usually point to the social harm caused by racism or homophobia, etc. This is unconvincing and is difficult to square with the fact that hate-crime protections have expanded as hatreds towards the target groups have decreased across society.
But the alleged concern with social harm draws attention to the second problem with hate crime: the proper limits of criminal law. In short, parliament should not enact crimes or pass sentences that are motivated by a desire to make people hold different beliefs and thoughts. Freedom of speech and conscience, and the ability to act on those beliefs, should not be curtailed unless, to use John Stuart Mill’s classic statement of liberalism, it is for self-protection or to prevent harm to others.
Take the recent case of Jacqueline Woodhouse, who became notorious in 2012 after her seven-minute racist rant on a late-night tube train went viral on YouTube. Among her profusion of swear words were insults like ‘you Africans take our council flats’ and ‘our country has been overtaken by people like you’. Woodhouse was so drunk she could not remember the incident but, after recognising herself on YouTube, she handed herself into the police. She pleaded guilty to racially aggravated harassment and was jailed for 21 weeks.
Woodhouse was imprisoned for expressing her thoughts!!!
Read the full article - here
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