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In the wake of hate, the law is not always enough In 2011, racist graffiti was found on the homes of three refugee families in Concord. Monitor file Vandals penned racist graffiti on the homes of three African refugee families in the South End of Concord, including at the Perley Street home of a Somali Bantu family on September 18, 2011. Alexander Cohn Ray Stevens listens as his attorney makes his case before the judge sentenced him in Merrimack Superior Court in 2015. Monitor file Published: 4/11/2021 7:00:05 PM In 2015, a tattoo artist named Raymond Stevens pleaded guilty to criminal misc...

CONCORD — In 2015, a tattoo artist named Raymond Stevens pleaded guilty to criminal mischief after defacing the homes of refugees in Concord with racist graffiti.   The hateful words scrawled on the siding were literal and clear: "You are not welcome here." Under the state's Civil Rights Act, prosecutors applied a hate crime enhancement to Stevens' sentence, resulting in a year of imprisonment in a county jail. Hate crimes are often referred to as message crimes — those that target and intimidate an entire group as well as the direct victim. In a 2012 study published in the Internation...