Law Commission sees sense

The Law Commission has now done a final report into hate crime law, and their recommendations are not to try and criminalise more New Zealanders. Their recommendations include:

• better processes for recording if an offence includes a hostility of hate motivation (this is already a factor in sentencing)
• Sex is included as a a group characteristic along the existing ones of race, colour, nationality, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, or disability. Was bizarre that gender but not sex was listed, so a good fix.
• New Zealand Police should publish data on reported hate crimes annually.
• Ministry of Justice should publish court data on hate crime cases annually.

So rather than include a new category of crime, which could be quite subjective, they have just focused on improving the current law which already allows hatred of a group to be an aggravating factor at sentencing. A good outcome.