Quote:
Originally Posted by GreyWolf
The abstract of this study (emphasis added):
An experimental study was conducted in an effort to establish whether hate crimes produce greater harm than similarly egregious crimes. Hate crimes are considered to be worse primarily because they are believed to be more likely to provoke retaliatory crimes and inflict distinct emotional distress on victims and members of the victim's social group or category. In this study, analogous samples of African American and White males observed two videotaped assaults motivated by racial bias in one case, and by an ambiguous motive in the other. Reactions were obtained following observation and revealed that emotional responses and expressed desire for retaliation were associated with participants' race but did not differ for the two types of assault. The findings are discussed in terms of the utility of current hate crime legislation as well as the implications of the observed racial differences.
I'm currently reading the other report, but it doesn't seem to offer much support either. I stand by my questions... where's the support for that statement?
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You should read more than the abstract. Especially the part where she talks about interpretations of the ambiguous assault. Let me just skip to the last couple of sentences of the article for you: "Therefore, policy makers are accurate in their conceptualization of hate crimes as specially heinous and egregious because, at least for some populations, they are likely to provoke retaliation."
By the way, the hate crimes legislation is old. What is new is the inclusion of sexual orientation as a category.
And crimes where the victim was a minority still receive much shorter sentences, on average.