Do hate crime laws work?

[Natasha]

Do hate crime laws work?

http://socialistworker.org/2009/08/10/do-hate-crime-laws-work
8/10/09

IT WAS a year-and-a-half after the horrific torture-murder of James Byrd Jr., the African American man who was assaulted, chained to a pickup truck and dragged for three miles by three white men in Jasper, Texas, a crime that the New York Times called "one of the grisliest racial killings in recent American history."

A few months later came the similarly brutal killing of Matthew Shepard, a 21-year-old gay man who was savagely beaten and left to die in Laramie, Wyoming.

[Janet_Girl]

Once a federal hate crime bill is passed and signed.  And the judicial system gives out very stiff punishments then they may work.  But enforcement is the key to any law.

And if law enforcement turns a blind eye what could will they do?

Janet