Are the perceived greater harms caused by hate crimes a plausible justification for the existence of hate-crime laws?

Abstract

Crimes that are motivated by prejudice or bias towards certain personal characteristics of the victim are commonly referred to as “hate crimes”. Such criminal conduct is said to cause greater harms than criminal conduct that is not motivated by bias or prejudice. Hate-crime laws are laws that specifically criminalise conduct motivated by bias or prejudice towards personal characteristics of the victim and laws that allow for the imposition of harsher penalties on convicted hate-crime perpetrators. This article attempts to find a plausible justification for the existence of hate-crime laws. The principal justification for the existence of hate-crime laws that will be considered in this submission are the greater harms that hate crimes cause to the victim, to the victim’s group and extended community and to society as a whole. Since hate-crimes are presently not recognised as a specific category of criminal conduct in South-African criminal law and specific laws do not exist to sentence the convicted perpetrators of hate crimes, consideration is given to whether a hate-crime law should be enacted in South Africa