“Cruelty has a human heart/ And jealousy a human face.”
William Blake
Songs of ExperienceYesterday, a widely reported study revealed that hate crimes in the United States have risen 7% in the last year.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7103244.stm “More than half of the victims were attacked because of their race, while 19% were targeted because of their religion, the annual report said.
However, there were wide discrepancies, with northern states reporting far more hate crimes than the southern states, despite the South's racial history.
Black activists say the real figure is higher, with many incidents unreported.”
The last bit is just as alarming as the numerical data. Violence against those perceived as socially marginalized---i.e weaker and less protected by the courts, law enforcement and the weight of public opinion---is a sign of a sick society. When the numbers begin to rise, it means that the country is unhealthy. Something needs to be done to cure the underlying problem. But how can you treat the disorder, if you can not judge the scope of the the disease?
Congress has a Hate Bill on the table.
http://www.hatecrimesbill.org/It would authorize prison sentences for those who commit hate crimes. It contains provisions for grants to help fight hate crimes. It would do nothing to mandate the reporting of hate crimes which is currently covered on a piecemeal basis by state laws, with the most progressive states requiring reporting and the rest of the states choosing to bury their heads in the sand. And this, I believe, is going to be key to addressing the problem of hate crimes, just as it has been essential to battling similar problems of child abuse and elder abuse. As with a host of other problems, until you admit that you have the disease, you can not get better.
Hate crimes and child/elder abuse share some things in common. They are committed by people who prey on the most vulnerable members of society, those who are either unable to defend themselves (in the case of children/elders or of hate crimes against the disabled, women or against a single individual by a group) or who may believe that they are unable to defend themselves (hate crimes against a member of a minority group who may fear police persecution if the crime is reported). The perpetrator is often someone who has severe psychological issues of his or her own. Possibly, he or she was a victim of violence in the past. The victim of the hate crime ends up being emotionally scarred. Hate crimes contain an added dimension of violence in that a whole group---the social marginalized group to which the victim belongs---ends up being frightened and traumatized by the crime committed against one of their own.
From here on I am going to concentrate on child abuse for the sake of brevity, although most of what I write applies to elder abuse, too. Not so long ago, people did not talk about child abuse in this country, except as something strangers did to kids. Stories about babies falling off the couch and sustaining fatal skull fractures were believed by medical personnel. All of that has changed. Now we have opened our eyes. Part of that has come about through mandatory child abuse reporting. (Below is a link about mandatory child abuse reporting)
http://www.smith-lawfirm.com/mandatory_reporting.htmOnce every teacher, law enforcement officer, doctor was required to report suspected child abuse, public health officials could begin to study the actual incidence of the problem and the syndromes and signs of the abuse. They knew what kind of dysfunctional families to look for. They began to learn what strategies to use to help the kids and to save lives. (Below is an example of statistical research about child abuse)
http://www.childhelp.org/resources/learning-center/statisticsAlthough reporting is still not close to 100%, it is much better than it was in the days of denial, and with reporting has come increased willingness of people to come forward to get help for their dysfunctional families. In contrast, “Reporting hate crimes to the FBI is not mandatory and not all law enforcement agencies participate in the program” according to this website.
http://www.boxturtlebulletin.com/Articles/000,007.htmAccording to the BBC news story cited above
The events in late 2006 in Jena, a small town in Louisiana, where six black teens initially faced serious charges for beating up a white youth after a noose was hung in their school yard, were not included in the FBI figures.
And
Louisiana reported 22 hate crimes, Alabama one, and Mississippi none, while California reported 1,297 and New Jersey 759.
Heidi Beirich, from the Southern Poverty Law Centre in Montgomery, Alabama, told the Washington Post that many states are dismissive of hate crimes and have different ways of classifying what constitutes a hate crime.
If some locales remain in a state of denial, then victims of such violence---minorities, women, the disabled, gays, members of minority religions---will continue to be easy prey, since they will be hesitant to report attacks to law enforcement officers, who, they fear, will side with their attackers, discouraging the victim from filing charges, perhaps even claiming that the victim is guilty of criminal conduct. This will lead to increased violence as the victims attempt to take justice into their own hands, as in Jena, which will increase animosity between different groups in the U.S. Or, it will lead to increased withdrawal from society (especially for groups like the disabled) along with increased fear and feelings of helplessness which may foster depression, apathy, anxiety, drug and alcohol dependence, all of which serve to keep already economically oppressed groups working for low wages without hope of improvement in their lot in life. This, in turn, only worsens the cycle of societal disdain and tacitly approved abuse, since the majority group sees the minority group living in poverty and mistakenly feels that this is a "lifestyle choice" and that the minority group is a drain on society. A vicious, endless cycle is created which benefits no one except those who employ low skilled, low paid workers.
At present, victims who believe that their local and state law enforcement does not represent all citizens equally have the option of calling upon the federal government. However, as we have seen under the Bush administration, federal law enforcement officials may be hesitant to intervene in a state in which the executive branch wishes to curry favor with the voters. Plus, once federal officials step in, state and local law enforcement tend to close ranks, at which point it becomes “us against them” and the chance for any meaningful solution is lost. Remember, in order for communities to solve their health problems, whether it be the need for clean water or the need for greater cooperation between disparate groups, the work towards that change must come from within the community, not from without, in order to be truly effective.
Right now, the United States is a patchwork when it comes to approaches towards dealing with hate crimes. Some of them could be useful on a national scale. In “Reporting Hate Crimes: The California Attorney General’s Civil Rights Commission on Hate Crimes”, the state describes a program that could be implemented in conjunction with its mandatory reporting program. See page 15.
http://caag.state.ca.us/publications/civilrights/reportingHC.pdfKey features include:
1. The data would allow the state to analyze trends in hate crimes
2. It would allow for a coordinated response from law enforcement, schools, community programs, churches and the media to trends in hate crimes
3. Teachers, law enforcement officials, workers at community programs and housing and church workers would be trained to recognize and report hate crimes.
4. Counseling, legal representation and assistance to victims would be provided.
I suggest that features of this California proposal be included in a revised federal bill. Instead of a law which slaps additional penalties on some defendants at the discretion of local prosecutors (many of whom have to appeal to bigoted voters for their jobs), how about a bill which emphasizes mandatory reporting of hate crimes to a national data base? The penalties would be sufficient to encourage compliance, but not so draconian that no one would want to prosecute. As with child abuse, certain professionals would be required to report. The law would include provisions to educate others who would be encouraged to report---
and who would be given immunity for reporting in good faith. The law would allow for involuntary reporting (i.e without the victim’s consent) but in that case, no specific identifiers could be used, meaning that name and birth date would have to be left out. In order to encourage victims to report, the law would provide for counseling services, compensation, legal representation for victims, whether or not a conviction for a hate crime is obtained.
As more victims began to report, the stigma would begin to decrease, as it has for victims of child abuse, child sexual assault and rape, and more reports would be made. This would make the statistics derived from reported data more meaningful. It would also make the public more aware of the threat of violence under which marginalized people live. Since much of the animosity towards members of other races and religions is based upon fear of violence
from those groups, the revelation that members of these groups have more to fear from the majority than the majority has to fear from them will help to change their perceived status in the eyes of the American public, which typically roots for the underdog.
Providing therapy and legal representation for those who have been the target of hate crimes will probably do more to help with their healing and that of their families than adding ten years to the sentence of their attackers----who will declare themselves victims of society in court. And they may well be. There is no reason that the motive for their crimes---say, a coordinated effort to incite a race riot—-can not be weighed by the jury on a case by case basis and used when making the decision on how long to sentence a defendant. I am concerned that in the South in particular, the current version of the bill will be used exclusively to add ten years to the sentences of African-American defendants who commit crimes against Whites, as long as the victim swears that the defendant uttered some racial slur for “white” while committing the crime. Even when correctly applied, the hate crime provision is more likely to be used against low income defendants who can not afford decent representation or in “glamour” cases by prosecutors who are trying to run for re-election in big cities. It is also unlikely to have a deterrent effect, since the people who act out violently are not rational and will seldom think to themselves “I am acting out of racial prejudice.” They are more likely to think “That ____ should never have ____ed me. He had it coming.” Or. "I did it in self defense. It was dark and he was ____."
Perhaps, instead of tacking on an additional ten years in prisons (where people like the Aryan Brotherhood can indoctrinate would be White supremists), we should consider a different form of extra penalty. When a crime is judged to be a hate crime, the defendant will be required to serve his sentence plus he or she will receive special counseling for hate criminals while in prison, analogous to the kind of treatment that sexual predators or child abusers receive. Once released from prison, rather than going straight out into the community, the defendant goes into a special treatment facility for hate offenders, where the goal is to work on the underlying fear and emotional disorders that lead to the attack. Keep in mind that hate crimes could also be called
fear crimes . People who commit them are often afraid of their own powerlessness, afraid of the unknown, afraid of their emotions. They are products of our society, not the total aberrations that some of us would like to believe, and if we limit ourselves to simply locking them away, more of them will spring up to take their places.
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