Punishing Hate Crimes: My Opinion

Assignment: Write your opinion about hate crimes legislation. This is not supposed to be a research paper but only your thoughts on the topic. ------ Should Hate Crimes be punished harder than non bias-based assaults? Hate crimes vary from other assaults, and therefore should be punished harder then a regular assault. There are a variety of ways to perform hate crimes; they are, for example, acts of violence, harassment, threats, and property damage. However, to …

…just because of who we are. Yes, in some way a crime is a crime and all crimes comparable to each other should be treated the same. However this is not possible. Take for example murders - there are first and second degree murders, pre-meditated or not. The law has looked at the reason for killings for many years. I believe HATE should be another reason to look at when considering punishment of the offenders.