At 13:28 11-12-01 -0500, Jon wrote: ><< > What exactly do you mean by "bias crimes"? > >Crimes where someone is targeted and abused for belonging >to an ethnic group that the attacker is biased against. >> > >I would also throw in 'religious group' or 'sexual preference' to that >definition. Crimes against the Amish or homosexuals or Amish homosexuals, >for instance.
Such crimes certainly do happen here. We have racial ones (attacks on members of ethnic minorities), anti-homosexual ones (gay-bashing), religious ones (particularly anti-Islam, by setting fire to mosques), and even anti-Semitic ones (doing damage to graves in Jewish cemeteries, either by doing physical damage or by painting swastika's and anti-Semitic texts on them). Especially the anti-Semitic attacks (one or two each year) lead to loud protests from the public and demands that the people responsible be found and prosecuted to the full extend of the law. I am sure that many of the various cases eventually lead to a conviction of the criminals, but there is no telling in how many of all cases. Problem is, of course, that the victim (the minority member, the homosexual, the owner of the cemetery) must first report it to the police; there are without a doubt victims who do not go to the police, for whatever reason. Jeroen _________________________________________________________________________ Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://www.Brin-L.com Tom's Photo Gallery: http://tom.vanbaardwijk.com
