Saturnalian wrote:
Mr Kissyfur wrote:
Saturnalian wrote:
MaliA wrote:
Mr Kissyfur wrote:
I'm not wholly comfortable with the reasoning behind any sort of "it's extra bad because of a specific motivation" offences. Any assault is serious, regardless of why the dick did it, and they should all be sentenced on the same, preferably harsh, basis. Getting stamped on is getting stamped on, whatever the stampers are shouting while they do it.
Yes, me, too.
That's works fine in a truly equal society where people don't kill each other because they look a bit different. But we don't live in that society and the extra deterrent is so people know that there is zero tolerance to discrimination.
How does that remotely follow? That only makes sense if people are more likely to kill someone because they're racist or whatever, and will simultaneously be more likely to be deterred by a higher sentence (the two, of course, not sitting well together). I'm not sure there's any evidence that's actually true.
I'd rather no one killed anyone, and we had sentencing that reflected that.
I'm a little too tired today to debate that in full, but sentencing
is supposed to act as a deterrent, you'll have to concede that. Whether it does in practice - probably not since all crime still exists.
I wasn't arguing that - I was arguing that the idea that if one sort of crime is worse due to a fundamentally irrational motivation then that would mean that a higher sentence would logically not act as a greater deterrent against those irrational fuckheads.
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In any event, sentencing is not black and white.
It is for racially aggravated assault, oho.
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You don't get X years for Crime A; Y for Crime B.
Yes, I'm aware of how sentencing works.
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If you line up Crime A as attracting a punishment of X years then you'll have mitigating features that will reduce the sentence then you have aggravating features that will increase the sentence. Racial (or otherwise) motivation is clearly an aggravating factor.
If someone attacks another because of their race or whatever, then a sharper punishment ought follow because it's abhorrent, socially unacceptable etc etc etc.
Is it more or less abhorrent than assaulting someone because they spilt their pint?
I genuinely don't see why the motivation makes one crime "worse" than another. Guy A attacks Guy B over Guy B looking at Guy A's bird funny (he did no such thing) and puts him in hospital leaving him without the use of his legs. Guy Z attacks Guy Y because he's black and puts him in hospital and leaves him without the use of his legs. Why should the latter crime have a higher penalty, when the effect on the victim is the same? Why is the former victim's pain and suffering worth less deterrence?
They're both fucking horrible crimes, and to say "well, one victim was black/gay/female therefore it's worse" is just wrong. Because the flipside is that the other "non aggravated" victim wasn't worth as much bother.