A point was made by someone on Bill Maher’s show a few weeks back about why federal hate crime legislation might be necessary. I have in principle been against the concept of hate crimes because it seemed to me to smack of thought crime, but this point has made me reconsider. I’m still ambivalent but more open to the concept.
The most compelling justification, for me, for federal hate crime legislation is that in some jurisdictions hate crimes will never be prosecuted. In a locality where feelings against homosexuals are strongly negative, a homosexual victim may not get protection or justice. Perhaps the police will decline to investigate an attack on a homosexual or an atheist or a Muslim or a trans-gendered person or any locally disfavored victim. Perhaps the prosecutor will decline to bring the case to a grand jury or to draw up a charging document. Perhaps the prosecutor will undercharge or half-heartedly prosecute the case. Perhaps, no jury in the locality would convict anyone for offenses against the locally despised victim. In such cases, offenders might reasonably consider that their victims are fair game.
A similar situation existed for decades in the South where black folks would sometimes be lynched. The police wouldn’t look into it, the DA wouldn’t prosecute, and no jury would have convicted the lynch mob. The federal government had no jurisdiction, and Congress consistently failed to pass legislation to provide for federal intervention in lynching cases.
I do not know whether there is a disparity in how justice is applied locally depending on the characteristics of the victim, but I would not be surprised to learn that it is a serious problem in some places.
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I see your point, but I am not sure that federal hate crime legislation is the appropriate remedy.
Arguing that a local lack of justice for certain groups justifies the federalization of law enforcement is no different, in principle, from the argument that the U.S. federal government should have jurisdiction over Iraq due to perceived deficiencies in the rule there (however accurate those perceptions might be).
To make matters worse, and getting back to home, once the feds move in, we can be sure that their interventions will not be strictly limited to the rectification of problems in the justice system. We can be sure that we have invited additional tyranny to the lives of the locals, once the system of federalism has successfully been undermined.
None of this is to say that local conditions should always be tolerated. But there has to be a better way to resolve them - probably secession for the disaffected would be a good remedy.
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