Chained to the back of a pickup truck by the ankles and dragged to death, one man's life ended in a heinous murder and the publics conscience awoke to the horrifying headlines describing the mutilated remains of a black man scattered along a road. The slaying last summer of 49-year-old James Byrd Jr. in Jasper, Texas, a harsh reminder to all Americans that violent crimes motivated by prejudice continue to disrupt our nation's sense of racial harmony. The nation was made aware once again of the reality of hate crimes in October 1998 by the fatal beating of Matthew Shepard in Laramie, Wyoming. The 21-year-old college student suff

"Studies have demonstrated that these offenses, in contrast to crimes in general, are more likely to involve excessive violence, multiple offenders, assailants who are strangers, serial attacks, greater psychological trauma to victims, a heightened risk of social disorder and a greater expenditure of resources to solve. Thus hate crimes represent a cluster of severe characteristics and risks that warrant enhanced punishment" (Levin and Fein 25).

Hate crime laws should be passed in every state because they would turn people away from committing hate crimes. If the punishment for a hate crime were a harsh punishment then people would not want to face the consequences for hurting someone for their beliefs, or race. People would feel a lot more secure knowing these laws are out there and that these people are being punished adequately for it.

Hate crimes legislation denotes a set of prescriptions that include toughening sentencing guidelines, expanding federal jurisdiction and requiring the compilation of statistical data on bias crimes. Currently, twenty-one states and the District of Columbia have hate crime laws with provisions on sexual orientation along with race, religion, ethnicity and, in some disability and gender; twenty states have hate crime laws that do not include sexual orientation, and nine states have no hate crime laws whatsoever (Kim 24).

With a closer look at race-based hate crimes, approximately 39 percent of the reported crimes were anti-black (3,120 incidents); 12 percent were anti-white (993 incidents); 4 percent were anti-Asian (347 incidents); .4 percent were anti-American Indian/Alaskan Native (36 incidents); and 3 percent were anti-multiracial group (214 incidents). "Although the number of hate crimes may seem small when compared with the incidence of other types of crimes in the United States, it can be argued that hate crimes terrorize not one victim but many, and that such assaults threaten the very fabric of the American sense of safety and basic understanding of differences" (Grigera 68).

Hate crime laws would help prevent people from committing crimes because once they see what happens to other criminals, they would be reluctant to commit the same crime. Deterring people from committing hate crimes would he

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