Forty per cent of police forces now investigate attacks on punks and goths as possible hate crimes, it has emerged, as academics urge the Law Commission to introduce new legislation aimed at protecting subcultures.
A consultation by the Law Commission is currently considering whether to recognise misogyny and attacks against “alternative subcultures”, including punks, goths and emos, as a hate crime category for the first time.
Prof Jon Garland, a lecturer at the University of Surrey who worked on the consultation, has welcomed the proposed legal reform to include the new group, which is already recognised by 18 police forces across the UK.
“My research has shown that the impact individuals from alternative subcultures suffer when they are targeted in attacks does seem to resemble that of the five main protected victim groups,” he said.
Why not just say that an attack on someone is a crime and go from there? Or would that be missing the point by making an attack on a cis-het-white-bourgeois-guy also be a crime?
IMHO “Hate Crime” is an affront to natural justice. Barring the well-accepted doctrine of “mens rea” its the action of the crime that the law should be concerned with rather than what has inspired it. It could also be said that it’s deeply unfair to the non-protected species of the population, ie the vast majority, that their suffering should be trivialised in comparison.
As far as I’m concerned it makes no difference whether its a member of the LGBTXYZ+ fraternity/sorority that gets their teeth kicked in or it’s a dead-straight able-bodied anglo-saxon male that suffers the same fate. The crime that should be dealt with is the teeth-kicking, end of.
“And when everyone’s special, no-one will be”
Constable: “I’m sorry, Mrs Smith, but although your son was brutally hacked to death, he was a normal white man so there is nothing we can do”
Mrs Smith: “But that’s terrible!”
Constable, idly flicking through a travel brochure: “Look I want to help…have you looked at his record collection? Any punk or goth stuff?”
Mrs Smith: “No, no, I don’t think so”
Constable: “Anything by the Cure, even? It doesn’t even have to be their early stuff. Even a ‘Best Of’ will do.”
Mrs Smith: “No, he was perfectly normal in every way”
Constable: “Then stop wasting my time, Mrs Smith”
The Law Commission has launched a consultation on its proposals. You can take part by completing an online response form. There is no need to reply to every question, but you do need to be quick – the consultation closes on 24 December.
https://www.lawcom.gov.uk/project/hate-crime/
@ allthegoodnamesaretaken
Not saying don’t reply, but government “consultations” are not designed to improve the proposals by taking the public’s views into account. They are intended to con the public into thinking that they have some influence into the final version.
This of course is a fallacy. You can’t have the oiks interfere with what their betters have decided.
/applause for Rob
Why not just say that an attack on someone is a crime and go from there?
We’ll get back that way eventually, once everyone is in a protected class.
It appears that lawyers, policemen, teachers and medics haven’t got enough to do.
Else why would the senior members of those professions be constantly dreaming up schemes to create extra work?
I dunno, I think punks might be removed from protection:
Song called ‘Boris Johnson is a Fucking Cunt’ by cult band The Kunts is unlikely contender to be Christmas number one after entering top 20
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9079829/Boris-Johnson-F-ing-C-t-unlikely-contender-Christmas-number-one.html
(I removed the stars of cleanliness)
Sneering at Etonians is obvs a hate crime. Or Arts graduates.
Surely demanding ‘the rich’ be taxed more out of pure spite is a hate crime?
A hate crime is a sentencing enhancement.
The purpose is that if you assault someone as part of a campaign of hate against a group of which they are a member, then you also intimidate and threaten other members of that group.
If people are beating up goths for being goths, then that’s going to scare other goths, and that’s a more serious crime than just beating someone up.
It really should apply to any group, rather than to just a list of protected groups. If someone burns down a banker’s house and they’re planning on burning down other bankers’ houses, than that’s arson enhanced as a hate crime.
It’s the same principle as terrorism as a sentencing enhancement. Blow up a bus and you get convicted of setting explosions and criminal damage (and gbh or murder if anyone was on the bus). Do so while in the IRA and you get banged away for a lot longer.
Why? Because you scare the living daylights out of the rest of us.
Not a hate crime:
” The group was organised by Habibur Rahman, 27, who called the victims ‘white b******s’ in his ‘country’, during the brutal assault.”
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/teens-hand-chopped-axe-appalling-20662959
Also not a hate crime:
” Six men have been convicted of murdering Mary-Ann Leneghan, who was abducted and killed in Reading after being held in a hotel and subjected to a horrific ordeal. Who were these men?”
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4778704.stm
British Lives Don’t Matter. To the Establishment, that is.
Would it apply to rival football supporters getting into fights? Seems like a clear example of group threat.
If one shouts “Allahu Akbar” during the commission of a violent crime, is that not a threat to 6 billion people?
By their definition, there cannot be a greater hate crime.
“It really should apply to any group, rather than to just a list of protected groups. If someone burns down a banker’s house and they’re planning on burning down other bankers’ houses, than that’s arson enhanced as a hate crime.”
Decent idea, but can we at least exclude lawyers and estate agents from the list?
I bloody hate Goths, me. I always despaired at going to see bands in the 1980s as I was the only one dressed in pastels.
One positive was that going to Xmal Deutschland concerts, the crowd wasn’t all Goths, but lots of young blokes like me who all fancied the lead singer Anja Huber.
Why pursue criminals when you can chase those with wrongthink?
Cultural Marxism at play. Allow crime; don’t allow free thought.
I went there and answered their questions but I despair at the failurjudging the bids.e of the Law Commission to understand things such as free speech or equal treatment under the law.
I was however amused at the suggestion that there should be a Commissioner of Hate Crime. Presumably zhe will be responsible for issuing tenders and
I did complete that sentence, I did.
They could team up with the Police and Crime Commissioners, bulk deals on commissioning crimes. 😉
Anja Huwe, not Huber.
I must be drinking the same stuff as Rhoda.
@Ottokring
I can see how youthful exposure to Anja might apparently lead to eyesight problems later in life leading to increased typos
Retired Mods and Rockers call for a truth and reconciliation commission
Rob: Clearly the failure to call attacks on normal white males a hate crime is a hate crime.
Off to prison with those evil whatever-it-is-they-call-them-these-days.
do the police still invetigate stuff?
‘Forty per cent of police forces now investigate attacks on punks and goths as possible hate crimes’
What are the other 60 per cent doing? Is there anyone left to answer the phone?
@ Gamecock
Yes, there is someone left to answer the ‘phone, but only one so the caller has to wait until they have finished the previous call (or calls, if there is a queue) and it can take over an hour to get someone to come when the burglar alarm is ringing in the NHS set-up next door. [Why the alarm didn’t connect to a warning system in a police station is a whole other story about the appalling incompetence of NHS bureaucracy.]