It’s all hate crime now

I will confess from the outset that I’ve never been convinced about hate crime legislation, from experience it doesn’t hurt anymore if the people attacking you are calling you names or not, nor do I see why some forms of verbal harassment should be considered worse than another. Still slowly but surely the special interest groups are getting their favoured groups tagged onto an ever expanding list of people you mustn’t say nasty things about. Today it’s the turn of Goths and Rockers to joined the hallowed ranks of special victims, with Manchester police force recording attacks on members of “subcultures” such as Goths, Emos, punks and Metallers as hate crimes. As a goth I find this really quite embarrassing, for the Punks and Metallers well if you need special protection for your feelings and when attacked well you’re probably in the wrong subculture. So far this is just a recording exercise and thankfully won’t make a blind bit of difference to the sentencing, but I do have to wonder when the term is as broad as “subcultures” where it can stop and just who’d be excluded and who gets to decide which subcultures count. It does though rather start to look as if the only person who can be attacked without risk of it being a hate crime will be your average white bloke, although I suspect they could be heading towards a minority once you exclude all the other subcultures and special groups.

The decision of Manchester police follow campaigning by the Sophie Lancaster foundation – with it’s rather forced tag line of “Stamp Out Prejudice, Hatred and Ignorance Everywhere”, because nothing does that like legislation aimed at specific groups. The foundation was set up following the murder of Sophie Lancaster by a group of yobs and want “Hate Crime legislation extended to include people from alternative subcultures or Lifestyle and Dress.” – so plenty of room for everyone under that banner. Whilst I may have missed it and whilst the murder was tragic for her friends and family – I’ve not seen any evidence that the yobs were motivated by hate rather than just general malevolence, but I’m cynical like that.

For the moment the former director of public prosecutions is “a little cautious about extending that the list of groups subject to hate crime, which is reassuring. Still if you’re in Manchester and get attacked don’t forget to follow NightJack’s advice for decent people and make sure to claim the attack was motivated due to your belonging to a special group – any group, it doesn’t matter any more. After all giving perpetrators of violence mo matter what the motivation decent sentences that even if not posing a significant deterrent (people after all never expect to get caught) would keep the aggressors away from the rest of us a much better plan than just teaching them not to call their victims names during the attack would be just too crazy for words.