AFSC's Position on LLEEA
A Letter to Friends and Colleagues
June 7, 2002
Dear Friends:
A renewed push for an addition to the federal cluster of hate crimes laws, the Local Law Enforcement Enhancement Act (LLEEA) is underway. Many friends and colleagues have asked if the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), a Quaker organization whose work for peace, social and economic justice, and humanitarian service is rooted in a spiritually centered vision of nonviolence, endorses this proposed law.
We know that supporters of LLEA seek justice that has long been denied, and we join with this hope. Yet our experience teaches us that in the U.S. today, crime bills do not produce justice, and so we do not endorse it. Neither have we launched a counter-campaign to oppose it. Rather, we choose to share our views in order to encourage a deeper dialogue about the meaning of justice in a world based on violence, exclusion, and inequality, and about the strategies needed to dismantle the violence of "us" and "them."
Our decision was not made lightly. It draws on more than 80 years of community-based work addressing the harms and root causes of war, genocide, poverty and economic exploitation, denial of rights and recognition, hatred, intolerance, and other forms of violence, and more than 50 years of engagement with the criminal justice system. Staff and volunteers from the communities most directly affected by hate violence in the U.S. — including people of color (immigrant, U.S.-born, and indigenous); lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people; Jews; Muslims; and people with disabilities — have been instrumental in shaping and organizing these discussions.
Our position is not one of idealism or ideological purism, but is born of our long and painful experience that piecemeal reforms of the criminal justice system, intended to serve entirely worthy purposes, frequently lead to strengthening the institutional violence of that system. The good intentions of reformers often do not translate with integrity in to actual practice. This is particularly so when the reforms sidestep difficult questions about the race and class biases that pervade the criminal justice system, and the violence, dehumanization, and rampant abuses of human rights within that system.
The AFSC is led to confront both forms of violence — not as separate, parallel issues, but as abuses of human rights and violations of human dignity that are dynamically interrelated and mutually reinforcing. Hate violence and the violence of the state are mirror images of one another. Deeply rooted in social and economic inequality, and not merely personal prejudice, both forms of violence target the same vulnerable and marginalized groups.
Our spiritual commitments and our experience lead us to search for justice strategies that possess integrity of means and ends. A central question is this: what do we hope the end result of our justice practices will be? If we seek a society in which the human and civil rights of all people are affirmed, and violence against others is truly not tolerated, AFSC does not believe expansion of the scope and authority of the criminal justice system will take us there.
The key element of most hate crimes laws is penalty enhancements. While LLEEA does not explicitly focus on penalty enhancements, it rests upon a foundation of penalty enhancements for hate crimes authorized in the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994 and, practically speaking, is an extension of that act. Has reliance upon harsher penalties really given us a safer society? Has it cured problems of selective law enforcement? Does expansion of the authority and scope of law enforcement help rectify historic patterns of injustice against poor people, people of color, women, LGBT people, and people with disabilities?
The U.S. criminal justice system has almost always translated this concept into longer jail sentences within correctional institutions riddled with the violence of racism, misogyny, homophobia/heterosexism, transphobia, and institutional indifference t o the needs of people with disabilities. Within a corrupt and violent system, imprisoning perpetrators for longer periods of time will only teach them more brutality. Moreover, in almost every area of criminal justice policy, penalty enhancements, like mandatory minimum sentences and similar measures are applied in an unjust and disproportionate way against communities of color and poor and working class people. While no specific data exists about hate violence, empirical studies of other areas have shown that such measures do not reduce the incidence of offenses or increase public safety. There is no reason to believe the system will work differently when it comes to hate violence.
The main impact of such policies over the past 25 years has been to fuel the mass incarceration of working class and poor people of color, particularly youth. (The U.S. now has the highest rate of incarceration in the world. State and federal expenditures for schools, health care, housing, job training, social services, and other human needs are slashed to the bone while expenditures for policing, prisons, and the military are increasing to almost obscene levels.)
Many of those charged with hate crimes are between the ages of 18 - 25. Quite a few appear to have suffered the harms of violence, abuse, and poverty in their own lives. Their histories in no way excuse the violence they have done. But while the AFSC believes they must be held accountable and not permitted to hurt anyone else, we also believe our society's response to hate violence must be based on an attempt to reclaim youth and young adults, and to help them rebuild their lives in positive ways. AFSC seeks to interrupt the cycle of violence, not further intensify it.
Justice is not a zero-sum game in which the rights of victims and offenders are antithetical, and the lives of one group must be sacrificed in order to achieve justice for others. This dangerous argument implies that there aren't enough human and civil rights for everyone, that if someone else's rights and human dignity are affirmed, "my" rights and dignity are necessarily diminished. This kind of thinking takes us down a slippery ethical and spiritual slope, leading us to a place where we are willing to accept the mistreatment of some in an attempt to create safety for ourselves. If our own actions are to possess ethical integrity, then we must work to ensure that no one is expendable. This is the hardest task of all, because it brings us face to face with our own inclination to render others "disposable."
Hate violence does not arise in a vacuum. Individuals may commit hate crimes, but they target those within communities already seen as expendable or unworthy. Because communities help produce the problem, they also bear responsibility for solving it.
Yet few, if any, hate crimes laws allocate resources to help whole communities strengthen their ability to effectively respond to and prevent hate violence, and to support the long-term needs of victims and their families. AFSC is convinced that more retributive justice solutions will not work. A new vision of justice is needed, one that helps all those whose lives have been devastated by hate violence — victims, offenders, and their communities — heal from the harms of that violence and create new, just, relationships.
AFSC prefers to explore policy alternatives and experiment with community organizing initiatives that would do just that. Moreover, we continue to support some elements of hate crimes laws. For example, AFSC supports data collection and reporting requirements, and believes that they must be mandatory. We support the authorization of civil remedies, and we believe that training of law enforcement personnel is essential.
But we must stand aside from approaches that rely upon institutional violence to heal the wounds of violence directed by individuals against other individuals.
For those interested in reading more about AFSC's views on the meaning of justice in a world based on violence, exclusion, and inequality, go to http://www.afsc.org/Justice-Visions.
Respectfully, in love and struggle,
Kay Whitlock
Former National Representative for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual & Transgender (LGBT) Programs
Community Relations Unit
American Friends Service Committee (AFSC)
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