Hate Crime Legislation

Hate crime enhancement makes sense for crimes like vandalism or trespassing where society does not reasonably want to have huge penalties for a kid breaking a neighbor's window with a stone on a dare, but does want to have larger penalties for that same window being broken as an act of intimidation to make a black family move out. Similarly spraying the name of your favorite rockband on your neighbor's van should be prosecuted, but spraying "kill Jews" on the same van should have a greater penalty, even though the defacement would cost the same in dollars to repair. These acts have the same dollar value but their impact are vastly different, and therefore reasonable to treat differently.

I don't think the same is true for violent crime. I think that having hate crime enhancement on murder, for example, is ridiculous, since the impact on the victim is identical. The same is true for being assaulted during a mugging or being assaulted for your race or orientation. Violent crime should have significant and serious penalties, and enhancements based on "reasons" for the violence only diminish the importance of punishing violence that does not merit enhancements.