House Co-Sponsorship Memoranda

In the near future, I plan to re-introduce House Bill 2534 of the 2011-2012 Legislative Session, which will amend Title 18 (Crimes and Offenses) of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes to provide disabled individuals protection from ethnic intimidation.

Hate crimes are inexcusable illegal acts of violence, and any individual that voluntarily engages in such activities must be penalized. The United States Department of Justice found that individuals with a disability are twice as likely to be victims of an act of violence as compared to the general population. In 2009, the Pacific Standard Organization found that 47,000 rapes, 79,000 robberies, 114,000 aggravated assaults, and 476,000 simple assaults were committed against individuals with a disability, across the United States. While the Commonwealth provides adequate penalties to individuals that target acts of violence towards others based on specific characteristics, it is essential that we expand protection to include those individuals with a physical or mental disability.

As currently established in the provisions of 18 Pa.C.S. §2710 (Ethnic Intimidation), it is illegal to intimate an individual with “malicious intention toward the race, color, religion, or national origin of an individual or group of individuals,” and individuals convicted of such offenses are to be sentenced to higher grading classifications. My legislation would further expand the offense of ethnic intimidation to include malicious intention against individuals with a physical or mental disability.

Previous Cosponsors: MICCARELLI, THOMAS, BRIGGS, V. BROWN, BROWNLEE, COHEN, DAVIS, DAVIDSON, GALLOWAY, HARHAI, JOSEPHS, KORTZ, McGEEHAN, MURT, M. O'BRIEN, PARKER, ROEBUCK, SCHMOTZER, STURLA, YOUNGBLOOD, GOODMAN, MAHONEY, WILLIAMS, GIBBONS, FABRIZIO, BRADFORD and DONATUCCI