The State attorney general, María José Segarra, has called on Monday a “reflection quiet” about hate crime to give them a criminal law response “proportionate, dissuasive and justice”. Segarra has made this request prior to the opening of a conference in Madrid of specialists on hate crimes and almost at the same time that the homorista Dani Mateo was brought in a court in the capital as investigated for this crime (in addition to another offense or outrage to symbols of Spain with advertising).
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The need to open a debate to raise possible changes on hate crimes is one of the concerns raised by Segarra since he came to office in June. The annual report of the Attorney General of the State, submitted in September, calls for search for alternative penalties to imprisonment in cases of hate crimes committed through social networks, a proposal that the Government has shown itself willing to study. In their statements Monday, Segarra has admitted that the prosecution is not always is showing “unit of action”, a problem that the district attorney wants to settle Makrobet with a circular that his department expects to have ready in the first quarter of 2019 and which will be sent to all prosecutor offices.
hate crimes are collected in the article 510 of the Criminal Code, which in its more severe forms, provides penalties of between one and four years of prison for those who promote hatred publicly or violence against a person or a group for reasons that are racist, anti-semitic, religious, or other circumstance. During 2017, according to the memory of the office of the Prosecutor, the public ministry filed 14 indictments for this type of conduct and were handed down 29 judgments. There is No exact data of how many of these cases are committed by users of social networks, but they are “the most”, according to has remembered this Monday Segarra, who has warned of the “increase of aggression for reasons that are racist, discriminatory or xenophobic as the hate speech on the Internet”. The prosecutor also reminded the minors, “big network users”, are becoming “sharers and authors”.
The PP amended this article of the Criminal Code during the first legislature of Mariano Rajoy to toughen penalties for hate crimes committed through the Internet, with the justification that multiplied their dissemination and, with it, the damage caused. After this change, the minimum punishment provided in the law when the facts are carried out through a medium of social communication is of two and a half years in prison. This modification, according to the attorney general, has not resulted, however, in the “creation of a category unique to hate crimes, which continue to be disseminated by the Criminal Code in different expressions”. In addition, new types of offences introduced in this reform, “have created vague contours” which, in the opinion of the attorney general, make it difficult the detection of these crimes, “and may not allow you to bring out all the variety that presents the phenomenon”. “We must look for solutions to your interpretation,” said Segarra.