Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe has posted an editorial today about the hate crimes legislation that is working its way through Congress.  He points out that the particular crimes that inspired the law were already illegal, and the people who committed them were either jailed or executed.  Adding ‘hate’ to the charges really won’t make a difference–the victims are still dead and the people who committed the crime are still in jail.

Mr. Jacoby states in his editorial:

“Hate-crime laws serve a symbolic function, not a practical one: They proclaim that crimes fueled by certain types of bias are especially repugnant. But that is the same as proclaiming that crimes fueled by other types of bias, or by motives having nothing to do with bias, are not quite as awful. Is that a message any decent society should wish to promote?”

He also points out that the proposed law would make it possible that a person who committed a ‘hate crime’ would be tried at the federal level as well as at the state level.  This is illegal under the US Constitution–the Fifth Amendment’s protects against double jeopardy.

This law is another example of Congress and ‘the law of unintended consequences’.  What they might have meant to do was to point out how horrible crimes which are the result of bigotry or hate are.  What they have done instead is to inject the federal government into local law enforcement issues and ignore the Constitution.

Mr. Jacoby ends his editorial with this thought: 

“The best hate-crimes bill Congress can pass is none at all. But if we are going to have such laws, why limit them to only four, or eight, categories of victims? Let Congress expand the pending legislation to include every crime of violence – regardless of the attacker’s motive, or of the group the victim belonged to. Murders, rapes, aggravated assaults, let us learn to see them all as crimes of “hate” – not the criminal’s hate for his victim, but society’s hate for the crime.”

I agree.