Hate Crimes Legislation: the best option?
 

The concept was on my radar, but only just barely until I recently got involved with a theatre activism project to broaden discussion:
there are several GLBT rights groups that do NOT support efforts to broaden hate crimes laws to include sexual orientation or gender identity.
(Sylvia Rivera Law Project's open letter can be found here).

Possibly the best arguments that came up within the theater group were that the prison system does absolutely nothing by way of helping the person who commits the crime: they're thrown away for awhile to get angrier and angrier until the day their time is up and they're back out on the streets. Furthermore, given that transpeople (as well as people of color) are disproportionately sent to prisons to begin with, and that prison guard standards are often shy of ideal, we're essentially loosing a homophobe / transphobe into a playground of oppression. They get to continue their violence with little or no further consequences.

I know the next logical question is: "Ok, so the prison system maybe isn't the best option we've got: what's your alternative?".
So far we've come up with things like restorative justice, queer response teams (both to stop crimes in progress, and provide reliable and free EMS to victims who often might not trust the institutions that already exist to treat them fairly), public shaming of the offender (that one's not my favorite)...
Ultimately, we all decided that there's probably even more better alternatives out there, but that this discussion needs to be happening in the wider community. So: what do we think?

Hate Crimes legislation
 

Changing attitudes from " well this victim is just a faggot" and underpunishing to "I better be careful and not underpunish because this is a hate crime," would be a reason for me to support hate crime legislation. The fact that gay and transgender minorities are indentified is yet another outward sign of the evolution of sensitvity and sensibility of more and more people in our counrty. I find this reassuring.

I myself have experienced discrimination by law enforcement. When two police officers refuse to file a police report when My ex broke into my house and attacked me, I had to threaten them with filing a witness report and handing it personally to their seargent after which they would have to explain to their seargent why they did not file a police report when they were at the scene ( the reason was that they didn't want to bother with protecting a worthless deviant homosexual faggot....in other words, me)

The open letter from the Sylvia Rivera Law Project in my opinion is a very complex eloquently logically written substantiation of....fear of retaliation for not "accepting our lesser entitlement" to respond to bigoted individuals' trepasses against us in society and within the legal system. "Don't anger 'the man' with your protests and retaliation or he will give a real reason to cry" is the fear we were all taught by our oppressors. This IMO is a complacency with remaining less worthy faggots now that it's not so bad anymore.

Some would consider this complacency disrespectful to the sacrifices our "fore-faggots" (a radfae term of genuine respect) made for our benefit.

I see Hate crimes legislation likened to Affirmative Action and Equal Opportunity. Flaws in fairness to all individuals can be indentified in all of these but these were imperfect solutions to a very imperfect society.

I should note that I DO very much agree with aspects of the legislation: I like that they keep tabs on the statistics, and I like that the federal bill allows investigations to be assisted by the federal government, so you're slightly less likely to get a small-town hick cop who hates fags and knows all the people involved.

That said, I think it would be a misreading of the letter to only take from it that the Sylvia Rivera Law Project (of all organizations) is encouraging anyone to be good little fags and dykes. I think there IS a legitimate concern to be had about what good this punishment is doing to actually prevent any future hate crimes. I think it's totally legitimate to assume that people are going to emerge from prison angrier at a given minority who "put them in jail" and with new connections with other people who are also violently angry at these minorities (this might be the reason you're talking about as just fearing backlash?).

I'm not advocating just letting them off the hook (my view is decidedly not to be characterized as "complacency"), but my point is that there has to be a better way of punishment (and arguably more importantly, some form of rehabilitation that actually works?) that doesn't, in turn, further punish the fags and dykes and transfolk that are already (again, disproportionately) in jail.

Alecto,

The topic you've raised isn't really hate crimes, it's the nature of the 'justice system' as a whole, into which you are plugging hate crimes as an example. I have NO idea what anyone can propose in lieu of what we have, which is more of a 'revenge system' than a justice system anyway.

If you really want to see changes/improvements in the conduct of potential future inmates, solve the economic problems and prevent child abuse and you will have accomplished most of it. Arguing with hate crimes protection isn't really the point here - the point you're making is that we have a faulty criminal justice system, not that there is something wrong with enforcing equal treatment for all citizens including 'despised' groups. Until our entire justice system gets overhauled for something vastly better, we are going to continue having huge societal problems and hate crimes protection is not the reason.

The society/government/bureaucracies are going to look for the easiest solution for them. Preventing crime, providing resources, education, and healing opportunities are far more difficult than just shuttling the problem out of sight for a while. That's what we need to overcome.

Sister Zerbie has said a mouthful here. If I had three wishes I would use the first one to eliminate child abuse (sexual, physical, emotional) and then I'd give the other two wishes back because I wouldn't need them... all my other wishes would follow automatically.

Our faulty justice system is just an extension of our faulty "rewards and punishments" child-raising philosophy. You won't fix the former without addressing the latter ... which of course ... we will never do.

Too many claims
 

From the letter Alecto cited:
Notwithstanding the faults of the criminal "justice" system, some of the rest of the letter has some apparent factual problems.

I have checked the FBI statistics on hate crimes on numerous occasions and cannot sunstantiate the claim made that black men are charged disproportionately with race-based hate crimes. There is a lamentable lack of hate-crime reporting, anyway. But I have not found this statement to be true.

The next statement about anti-heterosexual hate crimes is also suspect. Sexuality, as yet, is not a basis for hate crimes and, to the best of my knowledge is not tracked by the FBI because of that. I would certainly like to proven wrong if, in fact, I am, but this seems like scare tactics to me. There are, I am sure, GLBT people charged with offenses against straight people, but the extent and nature of those offenses would have to come from another source, and I would need to see proof of the "hate crime" status.

Likewise, the claim that, if GENDA passes in New York, trans people would be charged with hate crimes against non-trans seems to be in the same vein as claiming that bestiality would be legalized if same-sex marriage became law. It is unverifiable prognostication and I would need to see some evidence that could support the claim.

While many aspects of the New Jersey 4 crime are already debatable, there are facts still coming out about what actually occurred. They were convicted on the basis of using violence to defend themselves against verbal assualt - that is, a disproportionate use of violence. Whether that is true is unclear as yet. This is hardly the case, however, to substantiate the claims made above, as it is so rare as to be laughable as a general example.

All in all, I found that there were some credible arguments in the letter - credible, but not convincing when examined under light. I still beleive the problem is the injustice system that convicts trans and people of color for all kinds of crimes, except white collar crimes, at a rate that is disproportionate. This is the result of bias. I would hope that, eventually, the courts would be held to the same standards as the rest of society and pay a price for that bias.

The FBI does keep statistics for sexual orientation: I'm not sure where those stats come from (maybe state wide hate crimes laws?), but they do exist. (I remember checking them out).

If we're acknowledging the bias inherent in the justice system, I don't think it's so much of a stretch to suggest that hate crimes legislation that empowers the prison end of that justice system will end up being used against people in positions without power.

And Zerbie: YES. One of the MAJOR major problems here is in fact the prison system. So if we acknowledge that that's heartily heartily flawed, I think it's worth asking: Is this the system we want to use as a community to try to protect ourselves? Will this even WORK to protect ourselves?

Prisons are supposed to serve one of three functions: rehabilitation, punishment / deterrent, and seperating "criminals" from the "good people" (despite the scare quotes, I don't think this idea is always problematic). The problem seems to be in this country that we can't really decide which function we want it to serve, so it does a poor job at all of them. There's usually almost NO rehabilitation (and in fact, as it exists, prisons encourage further problems of the same sort), as a punishment or deterrant it obviously fails as evidenced by the number of repeat offenders. And unless we have life sentances for a lot more problems, we can only keep people seperated from society for so long.

What I'm suggesting is that we all, as a community, actually consider some other options. Restorative justice often uses the prison system to encourage participation, but there's a LOT of good there. There's the Milk style whistle system, queer patrols or hotlines:
it seems like there's so much more we could be doing to both prevent and deal with these issues than what I see (anyways in my town: and I acknowledge it's going to be specific to each community, but We the Big community should totally be having this conversation).

Definitely.

Problems with the prison system is an ENORMOUS subject. They will also not be fixed unless a huge majority of our society gets involved in major change, probably from the social end, not the political. I can't even picture what positive change in this regard would look like.

Among only a few things that would need to happen are:
1. be sure we're jailing the right person. (there are some Americans out there who think you wouldn't be arrested unless you 'did it.')
2. It bears repeating: prevent child abuse. If we stopped teaching children that violence gets them what they want, we'd be halfway to reform already.
3. Fix economic problems/injustice. If you work full time and still can't afford rent and food, let alone to pay for doctor's visits or to feed a child, how long before desperation turns to robbery, child neglect, suicide, or taking options like selling drugs/prostitution?

I know this is barely the tip of the iceberg. Our prisons seem cut out to create repeat offenders. They are not conducive to mental OR physical health, and people who are unwell are less capable than healthy people of making beneficial choices. I'm sure there are many other problems with the system beside that.

Unless a majority of people in our society are actively engaged in creating a better world economically, mentally, emotionally, socially, etc, I have no idea how to imagine something as problem-ridden as the prison system improving.

I don't like hate crimes laws in general because people should be punished for their actions, not their motivations. If someone hurts someone they should be prosecuted. I don't think someone should be punished more for hitting someone and yelling "take that dyke" than for hitting someone and not saying anything at all. Also, if some idiot spraypaints a swastika on a wall and some other idiot spraypaints "joe was here" it is both vandalism and should be punished the same way.
What I think we should do about hate crimes is quit waiting for the cops or "justice system" to protect us and start protecting ourselves. Gays are easy targets because we seen as weak and that we won't go to the cops because the cops won't help us. We need to stand up for ourselves. I am a member of Pink Pistols and the NRA. We should look out for each other and have our own security.

My $0.02 Worth
 

From Zerbie:
1. be sure we're jailing the right person. (there are some Americans out there who think you wouldn't be arrested unless you 'did it.')

Some Americans? In the U.S., the whole law enforcement/justice system seems to have an attitude of "guilty until proven innocent". If you're marginalized in any way, you're really in trouble. (GLBT, poor, non-white, homeless, mentally ill, etc.)

Most Americans think they have the greatest justice system in the world, and have no idea of what the system looks like to the rest of the world. The folks participating in this thread do seem to have an idea, and I give you kudos for that.

Wrongful convictions happen in Canada too. The case that disturbed me most was the Guy Paul Morin case. This poor guy was wrongly convicted of raping and killing a little girl basically because he was the neighborhool wierdo. (He was eventually cleared by DNA evidence.) Police focused on him because he was "eccentric" and "a loner". I wonder how many people end up on American death rows because of that kind of stuff.