Both perpetrators should be punished the same way. A crime based on hate is just as worse as a crime based on indifference. .
Furthermore, hate crime laws are superfluous because hate crime is the only type of crime that gets a separate distinction. "Perhaps" a columnist once said, "other crimes deserve their own designation. Sexual assailants could face harsher penalties for having a sex drive"(Martin). The only reason hate crime gets a separate distinction is that the government does not know how to deal with this phenomenon, by creating these laws they avoid being "perceived as defending racists, bigots and homophobes"(Martin).
Besides, hate crime has become a problem because the subject is treated the wrong way. Hate crimes are very serious, but so are a lot of other crimes. Of all crime, only a small percentage is of hate crime, while hate crime is the one that is most discussed. Also, most perpetrators of hate crimes are .
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young people and a lot of them are juvenile offenders. Often, the perpetrators are "hardly older than juveniles"(Jacobs and Potter, ). They get very harsh penalties and go to prison for a long time for something that was not really a serious act, but an act of ignorance. In their book "Hate Crimes: Criminal Law and Identity Politics" Jacobs and Potter give an example about a man in his 20s who has burnt a wooden cross and is in prison now for ten years. This penalty seems much too high and would never have been pronounced before the hate crime laws were created.
Also, it has never been proved that raising sentences decrease the number of hate crimes. Then, one may think about the usefulness of hate crime laws because the only thing these laws do is raise the sentences and if that does not stop other people from committing hate crimes, why do these laws exist? It seems clear that these hate crime laws are superfluous.
