Hate crime statistics

The FBI announced Monday that police across the nation reported 7,722 hate crimes last year, up 7.8 percent from the 7,163 such incidents reported in 2005.

Now, it's a bad and serious thing that some Americans still seek to harm or frighten others based on the victim's race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability -- today's long-winded definition of a "hate crime," likely to grow still longer as new groups line up to shout, "Me, too!"

Nor is it quite right to dismiss such tallies merely because they define crimes by the "intent" of the perpetrator.

Prosecutors and juries frequently undertake to judge a culprit's intent. We punish a premeditated murderer far more harshly than someone who caused a death by accident, and rightly so. Someone who commandeers another person's car or boat without permission may be held to have committed no crime at all, if it was the only way to get an accident victim to the hospital in time.

In that same light, the original intent behind recognizing the additional corrosiveness of the "hate crime" is understandable. If some vandal spray-paints random gibberish on our fence or garage door, that's an exasperating crime against property. But it's far less likely to cause a child to cry herself to sleep in fear than someone who spray paints death threats accompanied by epithets that let a family know they're being targeted for being black, Jewish, Chinese, or what have you.

Police officers should treat the ritual hanging of a family pet far differently than the theft of some lawn chairs, rather than merely shrugging that both have the same "cash value."

Intent can matter.

But measuring minor fluctuations in these "hate crime statistics" -- heavily influenced by the number of police agencies that do or do not choose to track and report such incidents, and the different definitions they apply -- can get silly.

The FBI reports six of last year's "hate crimes" were rapes, three were murders, and many others were motor vehicle thefts. Are we to believe rape should be punished less severely if it's not motivated by "race, religion, or sexual orientation"? What exactly is a "non-hate rape"?

How about murder? Murder tends to be pretty personal. Is it worth the bother to determine which murderers "hated" their victims, and why? Should we feel better if our car thief was indifferent toward our race or religion?

Inadvertently, we have now created a whole new arena in which people can wonder whether justice is truly color-blind. In a widely publicized case, three white students were suspended from school but not prosecuted after being charged with hanging nooses from a tree in Jena, La., in 2006 -- apparently a symbol that black students were not welcome to sit under that tree, which had become a gathering spot for white students.

"Hate crime" fans cried foul. Federal authorities explain they do not generally bring hate crime charges against juveniles.

Later, six black students were charged by LaSalle Parish prosecutor Reed Walters with attempted second-degree murder -- subsequently reduced to aggravated second-degree assault -- after a white student was beaten unconscious in December.

Were these both hate crimes? Can hate crimes be committed only by one race, and not another? Are any of these unfortunate incidents really the business of the federal government?

Once things reach the level of felony assault, a crime is a crime. No crime should be shrugged off based on the identity of the victim. But it can be just as corrosive to our notions of equality before the law to punish some crimes more harshly than others -- or to drag them into federal court in violation of the Sixth Amendment guarantee that the accused "shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district in which the crime shall have been committed."

The Constitution makes criminal justice the business of our local communities. Just as important, under our system, justice is guaranteed to the individual victim and fair treatment before the law to an individual defendant.

Justice for "groups" is not contemplated. Nor should we allow such a major and potentially disruptive change to occur unexamined.