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why should there be a law??

The rationale for hate crimes is two-fold.

First, there is something inherently worse about being attacked for an innate characteristic (race, etc) than for something that you can control (like how you dress or act) or because someone wants your money.  Think about it like this: I'd rather have someone call me a jerk because of the way I act than to tell me that I'll never amount to anything because people of my race never do (which my wife's grandfather said about me).

On a less personal level, a crime against a person because of their race/gender, whatever, can be seen as an indirect attack on, and intimidation of all the people of that group.  As such, it's more "dangerous" to society than an attack on someone for random or for more personal reasons.

Hate crime legislation is a sentence enhancing law. Meaning, if a defendant is convicted of a crime which carries a maximum sentence and then the prosecutor meets the burden of proving that crime was done based on hate of one of the classes of people, then the maximum sentence will carry an additional punishment for the motivation. If you take something like vandalism is the crime and maybe it carries a max penalty of 1 year in jail, but the vandalism is of the home of a Jewish resident and the vandalism was the spray painting of anti-semetic symbols, the judge could sentence that defendant for longer than 1 year in jail. The purpose of criminal law is primarily deterrence- specific deterrence to the defendant so he/she will not do it again and general deterrence to the public at large. Thus, the purpose of Hate Crime legislation is to deter people from committing crimes against individuals based on religion, race, color, gender, sexual orientation, or disability.