Non-crime hate incidents have been on the rise in recent years in England and Wales, and in Scotland, they are on their way to becoming more common than ever before. But what exactly is the difference between a hate crime and a non-crime incident? And what role do the police have in investigating them?
00:00:30.580What business do our police forces have in investigating non-crime?
00:00:35.520Is this not the precise opposite of their purpose?
00:00:38.240It would be the equivalent of a doctor who limits his attention to the vigorous and the healthy.
00:00:42.980And yet this is precisely how our law enforcement officers are spending much of their valuable time.
00:00:47.500Between 2014 and 2019, almost 120,000 non-crime hate incidents were recorded by forces in England and Wales.
00:00:55.860Estimates now suggest that since then the figure will have risen to well over a quarter of a million.
00:01:01.780In Scotland, the situation has arguably got even worse, what with the introduction of the SNP's new hate crime law.
00:01:08.180Police Scotland is already stretched to the limit, which is why it recently announced its proportional response strategy.
00:01:14.180That is to say, the police will no longer investigate vandalism or theft if the crimes are unlikely to be solved.
00:01:21.040And yet First Minister Hamza Youssef believes that non-crime ought to be a priority.
00:01:26.300Here's what he had to say in a recent interview with STV.
00:01:29.080In terms of incidents and hate crime incidents, it's important that they are recorded because what it does is it gives police an idea of where there might be spikes in hatred.
00:01:37.340That behaviour might not be criminal, but they can then see a pattern that is simply done so police can see if there's a rise in anti-Semitism, for example,
00:01:44.040or a rise in homophobia right across the country.
00:01:48.720It's important that police are able to monitor any patterns of hatred that might emerge.
00:01:52.180It has apparently escaped Youssef's attention that the rate of non-crime has escalated in recent years because there is no evidential threshold required for such incidents.
00:02:01.740They are recorded by police even when there is no evidence of hatred other than the perception of the victim.
00:02:08.720And these numbers become wildly inflated the more that the police appeal to the public to report them.
00:02:14.120Who would have thought that people with a grudge might exploit such a system?
00:02:17.600Youssef's comments came about because a Scottish Conservative MSP, Murdo Fraser, discovered that the force recorded a non-crime hate incident against his name.
00:02:27.300This was a result of criticism he'd posted online of the SNP's policies on gender self-identification.
00:02:33.360Choosing to identify as non-binary is as valid as choosing to identify as a cat.
00:02:38.920I'm not sure governments should be spending time on action plans for either.
00:02:42.620And Fraser is not the only politician who has fallen foul of the non-law in recent times.
00:02:48.280In 2017, the then Home Secretary Amber Rudd had a non-crime hate incident recorded against her because she referred to migrant workers in a speech at the Tory party conference.
00:02:58.540Someone took offence and contacted the police.
00:03:02.020And Rachel McLean, the MP for Redditch and Deputy Chair of the Conservative Party, was in the news in December for reposting a tweet in which she referred to Green Party candidate Melissa Poulton as
00:03:12.920a man who wears a wig and calls himself a proud lesbian.
00:03:17.540This happened to be a statement of fact, but this didn't stop the West Mercia police adding the dreaded mark against her name.
00:03:24.740In 2014, the College of Policing, the Quango responsible for training police forces in the UK, introduced non-crime hate incidents.
00:03:33.360They had no mandate from the government.
00:03:35.260It was more a case that activists who believe in the need to control the language of the public had become predominant, as they have in so many public institutions.
00:03:43.080The idea would be that even if someone hadn't committed a crime, signs of hate needed to be monitored in case these sentiments developed into criminal activity in the future.
00:03:50.900Philip K. Dick once described this kind of thing as pre-crime.
00:03:55.080He thought he was writing dystopian science fiction, but in actuality, he was predicting the state of the UK in the early 21st century.
00:04:03.000Non-crime hate incidents work in the following way.
00:04:06.100If someone feels insulted or offended and perceives that the slight is motivated by hate, they can contact the police and the person in question will have a hate incident recorded against them.
00:04:15.100They usually won't be informed and the only way to find out is to submit a subject access request.
00:04:20.900Hate is defined as an offence against one of the protected characteristics, and you can find those listed on the websites of the Crown Prosecution Service and the College of Policing.
00:04:30.520Race, religion, sexual orientation, transgender identity and disability.
00:04:34.860The SNP has added a sixth category in its new hate crime legislation, variations in sex characteristics, which is apparently related to those described as intersex.
00:04:45.380Those familiar with UK law will have noticed that this list is a riff on the protected characteristics of the Equality Act 2010.
00:04:53.120Gender reassignment has turned into transgender identity.
00:04:57.500And the category of sex has been removed entirely.
00:05:00.460In other words, the law enforcement agencies are using revised lists of their own making to better reflect their ideology.
00:05:08.020This explains why threats against women for standing up for single-sex spaces tend to be ignored by the police, while those accused of misgendering have been strong-armed into custody.
00:05:18.520And although nobody has been actually arrested for non-crime, there can be serious implications.
00:05:23.480There are certain jobs, such as teaching, for which a disclosure and barring service check is a prerequisite.
00:05:29.080Applicants for posts of this kind are likely to be eliminated from consideration if a non-crime hate incident is flagged.
00:05:34.660And in any case, the principles of a liberal democracy ought to override such practices.
00:05:39.960It is deeply sinister and authoritarian to have the police recording lists of citizens who have committed wrong-think.
00:05:46.740One wonders how many of us have been logged as hateful in this way.
00:05:50.960A man in Bedfordshire was slapped with a non-crime hate incident for whistling the theme tune from Bob the Builder at his neighbour, which for some reason was interpreted as racist.
00:05:59.680Other actions that have been recorded as hate incidents by police include a disputed line call in a tennis match,
00:06:06.140a dog defecating on someone's lawn, and a man saying that he was campaigning for Brexit.
00:06:11.480Even children's playground insults have been logged as non-crime hate incidents.
00:06:15.980The lawyer, Sarah Fillmore, who has appeared on my show many times, was recorded as having committed a hateful act when she posted a satirical tweet,
00:06:23.940which featured a picture of her puppy, along with the caption,
00:06:27.280My dog will call me a Nazi for cheese.
00:06:31.000As Fillmore has noted in relation to Youssef's recent comments on the subject,
00:06:34.440the recording of malicious and ideologically motivated complaints of hate provide the police with zero useful operational information,
00:06:42.100even assuming they can never get round to analysing them.
00:06:45.000This is about Sez Etzong, the Stasi technique of psychological degradation to make us afraid,
00:06:50.720to make us our own jailers and our own censors.
00:06:54.420Cheaper that way than prison or bullets.
00:06:56.820Not only is all of this a huge waste of police resources and taxpayers' money, but it's not even lawful.
00:07:02.340We know this thanks to the efforts of Harry Miller, a former constable who was contacted by Humberside Police in 2019
00:07:08.240following a complaint by an offended party about a poem that he had shared on social media which was deemed to be transphobic.
00:07:15.520Harry, being an ex-cop, knew something was amiss.
00:07:18.700He asked the officer why the unnamed complainant was being described as a victim if no crime had been committed,
00:07:25.020and why he was being investigated at all.