Hate Crimes Should Be Punished

Stated in the Hate Crime Statistics Act of 1990 "crimes that manifest evidence of prejudice based on race, gender or gender identity, religion, disability, sexual orientation, or ethnicity." These are crimes based on an individual’s points of views and/or mind set about a certain group of people. The victims of these people are innocents that just happen to have qualities that bother someone else and therefore punished for them. Hate crimes are born of hate not passion or anger but simply put hate. As such crimes of that severity should be punished severely or even more. Hate crimes are committed to send messages well there are some that believe that message should be replied too. If hate crimes were punished more severely, it would discourage future offenders, help cease the psychological damage, …show more content…
An example of this is the Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act that came into effect after the case of James Byrd Jr. James was murdered for the simple fact that he was an African American while Matthew Shepard was tortured and murdered because he was gay. To prevent crimes of this nature, if more acts like this would have been implemented tragedies like James Byrd and Shepard could have been prevented due to the severity of the punishments. for example Byrd’s murderers one of them was given life in prison while the other two were given the death sentence with one already executed while the other awaits death. Since the act came into effect it has been enforced on several occasions and individuals have been found guilty and trialed under the act. Hate crimes unfortunately still happen today however due to the severity of the punishments future perpetuators are forewarned that their actions have dire consequences and should be prepared to face the full extent of the