Spread of Hate Crimes Has Lawmakers Seeking Harsher Penalties.

'The anonymous email arrived on a Saturday afternoon, its message jumbled, misspelled, in capital letters. It was not addressed to a specific individual at the Birmingham Islamic Society. Rather, its hateful message was directed at African-Americans, Mexicans and Muslims in general.

Three words stood out: “run or die.”

About 10 miles away, the telephones on the campus of the Levite Jewish Community Center rang four times in six weeks with bomb threats, the third call resulting in the evacuation of children just after morning prayer at the day school.

The interfaith threats were enough to prompt the introduction of a bill in the Legislature expanding Alabama’s hate crime law to include threats against religious institutions and schools.

“We know the story of threats and fear,” said Rodger Smitherman, the Democratic lawmaker who sponsored the bill and whose wife was friends with one of the four girls killed during the 1963 church bombing there. “No one should have to live with being afraid.”

A wave of hateful episodes and attacks have been reported across the country in recent months: threatening calls and notes, physical assaults and confrontations, and even deadly shootings. The response in at least a half-dozen states has been anti-hate legislation aimed at beefing up penalties and expanding definitions of what constitutes hate. . .

The legal definition of bias-motivated crimes varies from state to state, with the same acts bringing vastly different punishments depending on where they occur. Five states do not have any anti-hate statutes: Arkansas, Georgia, South Carolina, Wyoming and Indiana, where a bill failed again this year. . .

“What you are seeing is this widespread feeling of fear and disenfranchisement,” said Brian Levin, the director of the center and a criminal justice professor. “Social, political and demographic changes are becoming so rapid and unpredictable that people are reverting back to a kind of tribalism and acting out with hate crimes or acts of uncivilized bigotry.”'>>>

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/30/us/hate-crimes-legislation.html?