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People who kill Transgender people to get longer sentences...

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Reply 60
The change isn't to give killing transgender people (or any other group for that matter) a higher punishment, it's to give hate crimes a higher punishment. Stabbing a transgender person in a mugging would result in exactly the same punishment as if they were any other person, but killing them for being transgender would result in a higher sentence.

Murder is bad, but it gets worse the worse your reason is. "I was protecting my family" is a pretty solid reason. "I found him having sex with my wife after he'd stolen my job, crippled me the week before and killed my puppy just for the fun of it" is weakening to the point where he'd probably be convicted, but it'd certainly be lessened. However "She used to be a man" is about as piss-poor a reason as you can fathom, it's right down there with "he was black", "he was wearing makeup" and "we believe in subtly different almighty deities".
This is much like affirmative action. I would personally sympathise with this action and fulling agree that this is needed. It is not to say that the life of a trangender person is greater than that of a cisgender person, but rather to combat the societal perceptions of transgender people where they are often belittled and treated as less than human. The murder rate among trangender people far eclipses that of other groups and is something that needs to be combatted. However, I don't think that punishments against people who commit the murders should be the only action taken. More effort should be taken in educating both the public and also the criminals on the issues of transgenderism.

Like affirmative action, the reason for increasing the prison sentence for murder against transgender people is purely used as a means to combat the problem.
Murder gets a mandatory life sentence, in the sense that you're always bound to the courts (any misdemeanour - God, I can't spell that word - will get you put back in prison under your original conviction pretty much straight away) but different 'types' of murder (e.g. 'normal' murder vs. racially aggravated murder) will mean the defendant has to serve different amounts of time in prison before he can be considered for parole. So, even though a murderer will never be completely "free," life sentences do vary in the sene of when the allow the prisoner to be let out on parole.

I can see the pros and cons for having longer sentences for murders of the disabled etc, but I think I'd change the law to make the mandatory life sentence in prison the same for the same 'type' of murder, regardless of the victim. The only instance in which there should be a difference is if the murder was particularly violent for example, or the murderer had multiple victims as opposed to just one. Or where the defendant's culpability was dubious but they couldn't quite get their sentence reduced to manslaughter. I'm sure there are other examples but it's half 2 in the morning so I shall let myself off! :tongue:

I think it's unfair on the 'normal' person (well, their family) that someone who was murdered in the same circumstances, apart from the fact that one was motivated because of the victim's disability or race, should not receive the same compensation (in terms of the sentence the murderer receives) as the other person. Blimey, that wasn't very well articulated, but I hope it makes sense all the same. If we are in pursuit of equality, then the law shouldn't distinguish victims based on their race, disability, or other such characteristics.
Reply 63
I imagine it's been based on a 2x (at maximum) disparity in homicide rates per capita, which one way or another is too small a sample size to draw any reasonable statistical conclusions because as far as anyone knows there's at the very most a low five figures' worth of trans people in the country, against 65 million inhabitants.
Original post by Skip_Snip
Trans 'community'? I hate that phrase, well when applied to 'gay community', there aren't seperate communities for either, no segregaytion!:smile:


I wish you people would make up your mind, do you want to be seen as different to the rest of us, and proud of those differences? Or do you want to be just the same and fully integrated, and proud of that? Christ.
Reply 65
Original post by TheHistoryStudent
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16089715

What do we think?

Is it fair that people who kill Transgender (or disabled) people get longer sentences than those who kill "normal" people? Does it somehow imply that it is worse to kill minorities - afterall, isn't all killing abhorent?

EDIT: Just to be crystal clear I've got nothin against Trans/Gay/Bi/whatever minority you care to mention, the article just strikes me as suggesting that killing someone from a minority group is somehow worse than killing someone who isn't from a minority group - when murder is murder and therefore the same no matter who you kill...

speaking of which, murder gets a mandatory life sentence at the moment doesn't it? Therefore isn't this a bit pointless? Unless of course it applies to manslaughter, but even then, it's difficult to argue that you kill someone accidentally/not mean to kill them because of their difference (unless of course you attack them and it results in death, but then it'd probably be murder.)


Just curious really.


Firstly, the article doesn't say, and the proposed reforms will not simply mean, that if you kill someone who is transgender you will get a longer sentence, it is if that murder was motivated because of the person's transgender status, so the point of the proposal is to reflect that a person who kills someone because of a characteristic that they have very little control over have greater moral culpability than if the murder is carried out in a less discriminate way.
Secondly, yes murder does carry a mandatory life sentence, however not all murderers get life, the judge has discretion as to the minimum amount of years they should serve thus according to this reform proposal if the killing is motivated because of the victim's transgender status then the defendant will have a higher minimum sentence than if the murder was not motivated by this characteristic. This is in line with murdering people because of other characteristics that we feel, in our society, is fundamental to them e.g. race.
This is a positive step in my opinion as it recognises that there is an obvious problem in our society and the law should reflect this and punish it accordingly.
I wholly applaud attempts to introduce further disincentives for hate crimes of this nature. I simply wish the measures weren’t necessary to begin with but, regrettably, they seem essential in order to counteract the absurd notion that members of certain social groups have lesser rights to inviolability. Personally, I always regard it as a sad indictment of humanity when situations like this arise since the prevalence of such views can only be perpetuated by the tacit acceptance (or even approval) of society at large. I’ll never know how anyone can lack empathy and introspection to the point that they’ll readily dehumanise or objectify others. I only hope we’ll eventually reach a stage where social libertarianism truly prevails.
Reply 67
"The Home Office has announced longer jail sentences for murders motivated by hostility to a transgender person."

They're getting longer sentences because it's a hate crime. It's sending out a message that hate crime is not acceptable.
Will it make that much difference anyway? Isn't murder usually a life sentence?
The Home Office has announced longer jail sentences for murders motivated by hostility to a transgender person.


i.e. if you kill a transgender person because they're a transgender person, you get longer in jail. If you kill them because you want their wallet, then the fact that they are a transgender person is irrelevant.
Reply 69
I don't think it's due to killing someone of a minority group, I think it's because they are (potentially) more vulnerable people- that's why it's seen as worse.
Reply 70
Original post by DirtyPrettyThing
I wish you people would make up your mind, do you want to be seen as different to the rest of us, and proud of those differences? Or do you want to be just the same and fully integrated, and proud of that? Christ.


Nothing I said even suggested I want to be seen as different
Reply 71
are transgender people more important than non transgender people?
Reply 72
The thread title could imply a phenomenon whereby people who crave a long prison senctence inentionally kill transgender people
Original post by Mm_Minty
"The Home Office has announced longer jail sentences for murders motivated by hostility to a transgender person."

They're getting longer sentences because it's a hate crime. It's sending out a message that hate crime is not acceptable.
Will it make that much difference anyway? Isn't murder usually a life sentence?


Murder is not acceptable. Hate crime or no. The original law, which increased sentencing for racist or homophobic slayings, was completely unjust as the person is dead either way. This only makes things worse.

Why should minorities keep getting preferential treatment? Equality is not enough for some people. Motive in murder cases only matters to severity as far as mitigating circumstances (eg provocation, but not sufficient to qualify as manslaughter; belief the killing was an act of mercy.) The tariff on the life sentence should reflect the number of victims, any further brutality inflicted on the victim such as rape or torture, and once those are taken into consideration, and very importantly the likelihood of reoffending. This can be assessed by experts once the person has served sufficient time to meet the punishment and deterrence objectives of their sentence, as determined by the judge.

If you are going to go down the deterrence route for longer sentences, then why do people who would want to kill a black or a trans need more deterring than people who want to kill a ginger-haired person or a prostitute? The distinction is entirely arbitrary. There is no reason why people with specific bigoted ideas would view the prospect of a longer term of imprisonment any differently to those with less socially proscribed prejudices.

And fifteen years on the tariff? When you will get two or three years more for serious violence against your victim before the killing, one or two for necrophilia, and 10 years more for using a bladed weapon? The Government appears to have lost its sense of proportion in a bid to be seen as sensitive to minority interests, when there are dozens of things they could do that would be fairer and more valuable to communities suffering from the hatred of bigots than skewing the punishments for killing a human being.
Reply 74
Original post by ScheduleII
Murder is not acceptable. Hate crime or no. The original law, which increased sentencing for racist or homophobic slayings, was completely unjust as the person is dead either way. This only makes things worse.

Why should minorities keep getting preferential treatment?


I don't see how minorities keep on getting preferential treatment. Most victims of racial crimes are white.

Other than that I would agree with what you have said. I don't see it as an effective deterrent.
(edited 12 years ago)
I can understand how increasing the sentence is perhaps supposed to act as a deterrent to violence against a vulnerable section of society, but I don't think giving out the message that the murder of one person is worse than the murder of another is a good way of going about it.
Since when did this degenerate into another trans-bashing thread? It's our bodies. People should just suffer, trapped in the wrong body, because YOU tell them they're imagining things? Absolute nonsense. Just because you don't understand doesn't make it wrong. Yes it's illogical - so is love. Let people live and grow how they wish. Forcing people to 'fix' themselves is just acting like it's an inherent disease, like trying to 'fix' a homosexual for preferring others of their own sex. It makes no odds and, unlike sexuality, it's not just preference, it's part of the self. So what if 'gender' is a moot concept? If someone's depressed because they're gender-dysphoric, does it matter if 'gender' doesn't exist? No. What matters is this person's choice, preference, and even their life.

Some people are born in the wrong body and they want to correct that. It's that simple.
Reply 77
Original post by Schemilix
Since when did this degenerate into another trans-bashing thread? It's our bodies. People should just suffer, trapped in the wrong body, because YOU tell them they're imagining things? Absolute nonsense. Just because you don't understand doesn't make it wrong. Yes it's illogical - so is love. Let people live and grow how they wish. Forcing people to 'fix' themselves is just acting like it's an inherent disease, like trying to 'fix' a homosexual for preferring others of their own sex. It makes no odds and, unlike sexuality, it's not just preference, it's part of the self. So what if 'gender' is a moot concept? If someone's depressed because they're gender-dysphoric, does it matter if 'gender' doesn't exist? No. What matters is this person's choice, preference, and even their life.

Some people are born in the wrong body and they want to correct that. It's that simple.


Whether gender or not exists matters quite a lot to the half of the human population who have been oppressed for millennia because of their gender. Reinforcing the idea that gender is this metaphysical transcendental notion that exists completely independently of culture excuses a whole range of gender-based discrimination. So if you say that you can be 'inherently' female although you're not genetically female because you inherently feel the desire to wear girly clothes and that desire is a sign of your inherent femaleness, you automatically write off women who choose to dress whichever way they want ignoring gender stereotypes as 'false' women or not-completely-female women and enforce the pressure that society already puts on women to act 'girly'.
I am absolutely against longer sentences for murdering different sorts of people. It is discrimination and it is basically saying that killing one person is worse than killing another person. If it was additional time because of the hate crime factor then yeah, but what if the murder has nothing to do with the fact that they are transgendered? It could of been over money, love, or they were just plain annoying.

Besides all that since when did longer sentences deter any murderer? the penalty is already life imprisonment.

This is as stupid as that rule that you get double the sentence for using a gun. The victim gets killed either way.

"Her life was abruptly ended when Leon Fyle, a young man she had never met before, murdered and robbed her in her own home" According to this it sounds like it was a robbery. Didnt nesscesarily have anything to do with the fact that she was transgendered.
Original post by kerily
Not being funny, but are you cis?

Is this The Student Room or The Unsymmetrical Alkene Room?

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