Hate crime can be defined as ‘any hate incident, which constitutes a criminal offence, perceived by the victim or any other person, as being motivated by hate or prejudice’ . Effectively hate crime differentiates from a normal criminal offence as hate crime is not really about hate, but about bias or prejudice . It is criminal behaviour motivated by prejudice that constitutes the key casual factor in the classification of a hate crime . The deviance of these crimes has been strongly reflected in statute as amounting to an aggravating factor when the judge is imposing a sentence on the offender . However, as there is no minimum tariff for hate crime the length of sentencing is at the judge’s discretion which gives rise to both advantages and disadvantages in the shape of flexibility to respond to different combination of facts . …show more content…
The principle of non-discrimination can be found in Article 21 of the Charter and Article 14 of the ECHR. The European Court of Human Rights has ruled in a number of cases that courts must clearly note the motivation behind racist crimes or those committed because of a victim’s religious belief. Overlooking the bias motivation behind a crime (i.e hate crimes) amounts to a violation of Article 14 of the ECHR. The Council Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia requires EU Member States to take measures to punish public motivation to violence or hatred directed against a person by reference to race, colour, religion, descent or national or ethnic origin. It requires national laws to treat racist motivation as an aggravating factor in already established