I suspect this is what happens: the cop checks the box next to “h----sexual hate crime” and doesn’t bother to actually read the word. Or else they don’t know what heterosexual actually means. Kind of like those evangelical Christians who, when surveyed by university students, said they would disown their child if it turned out to be a homo sapiens.
But yes, it then skews the stats, and it’s the sort of thing that’s hard to train adults on, because they think they’re already doing it correctly.
Too good to be true, by the way:
But you’re right, much of this seems to be lazy reading.
I am constantly having to correct database entries indicating “Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea” when people mean South Korea (Republic of Korea), and then repeatedly having to explain that no, the “Democratic” does not mean that they are a democracy. So, yes, I definitely see this as an explanation.
The problem is that it creates a perception of a type of hate crime that doesn’t actually happen. And gives the type of people who actually commit hate crimes something to point at when claiming their own “persecution”.
Right, that’s why I mentioned the skewed stats.
It’s like here in TO when this guy who had been carded by the police over 5 times asked for his info. He’d been assigned different ethnicities by every cop, none of which were accurate, not least because they’d never asked him for that info when they were carding him.
(For those who haven’t heard the term, “carding” is when the police ask for your info just because. Black men in Toronto were being targeted around 25% of the time, even though black people are only around 10% of the population. Not only a racist practice, but nigh-useless in terms of data collection.)
The more a country’s name is prefixed with “Free”, “People’s”, “Democratic”, etc the less free it actually is.
Except of course for the Glorious People’s Republic of Treacle Mine Road.
There was a neat article on that by Maggie KB (Yes, I miss her too), which explained how a similar phenomenon of people ticking the wrong box on surveys ended up creating a study that was then used to fuel all the claims of “voter Fraud”.
I miss Maggie, and she was never even here.
We can always invite her.
Latest post from Maggie
Maybe not so easy. She hasn’t been at the Other Place in years, and engaged with the comments about as often as Xeni.
@staff would it be possible to use this plug-in or something like it
to automatically create topics here for Maggie’s articles?
I don’t see why not. I’ll look into it.
Edit: Well, that could have gone better…
On the plus side, we’re now on the latest version.
I’ll make another run at it soon, at a more appropriate time.
As a general rule if democratic is in a countries name then not a democracy. Easiest way to remember.
Eta @AndyHilmer beat me to the punch here.
Of the several countries listed here as (nominal) democracies,
two-- the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste, and the Democratic Republic of Sao Tome and Principe are counted as “free” by Freedom House*. Many others do not fare so well in the rankings.
*I’m not so sure that we should trust them.
As a general rule, if “freedom” is in the name … ?