‘Very Little Has Changed’ With Non-Crime Hate Incident Guidance: Expert

The rainbow flag on a police officer during Pride in London on July 6, 2019. (Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images for Pride in London)

In 2021, a court ruled that the police’s official guidance on non-crime hate incidents unlawfully interfered with free speech rights, though there is confusion as to why they still are still being recorded.

British police encourage the public to report non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), described as “any non-crime incident which is perceived by the victim or any other person to be motivated by hostility or prejudice,” on official hate crime sites.

But in 2021, a top court ruled that The College of Policing’s (CoP) guidance on recording NCHIs violated former policeman Harry Miller’s freedom of expression as set out in Article 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights.

The updated guidance from CoP now says that NCHIs “should not be recorded where they are trivial, irrational, or if there is no basis to conclude that an incident was motivated by hostility.”

Ideologically Unsound

However, some have argued that this encourages conduct that still violates freedom of expression.

Miller, who is a part of organisations Fair Cop and the Bad Law Project, told The Epoch Times that he believes that the reason the police use NCHIs is because “they record, because it’s a handy way to mark people’s character.”

“If you have an NCHI, you are ideologically unsound,” he added.

Former police officer Harry Miller speaks to the media outside the Royal Courts of Justice in London on Dec. 20, 2021. (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

A CoP spokesperson explained to The Epoch Times by email in regard to how police decide if an issue is an NCHI, the “decision on whether to record must be taken by local forces depending on the circumstances of each case, applying the guidance we give.”

“The recording of crime and incidents is subject to extensive guidance, the Home Office issues National Crime Recording Standards and NPCC issues the National Standards for Incident Recording,” she said.

She said that there are also a number of “course of conduct” crimes, such as stalking, and “although certain behaviours may not be a crime at the first time of committing, they become crimes when repeated.”

“It is important that these non-crime incidents (which may be motivated by hate) are recorded so that the eventual crime can be proved,” she added.

“In regard to NCHIs being confusing for the average officer, this is why we provide guidance to help create clarity for officers around this,” added the spokesperson.

Hate Crimes

Critics have seen the use of NCHIs as part of the police’s hyper-focus on collating hate crimes. Police in the UK actively encourage the public to report hate crimes.

The think tank Civitas pointed out in a recent report (pdf) that there is activist-led influence on the police to take up “hate crime” as a police priority.

It found that seven police forces recorded almost 27,000 NCHIs over five years, with the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS) alone accounting for 10,961.

This was a 75 percent increase over five years for the seven police forces. For the MPS, it is 129 percent.

The rationale in the CoP 2014 Hate Crime Operational Guidance (HCOG) 2014 and in the October 2021 iteration for recording NCHIs was that they are a necessary measure to prevent escalation to hate crime.

The CoP spokesperson told The Epoch Times that in regards to research showing that recording non hate crime incidents stops hate crime, “it would be incredibly difficult for us to give you statistics on what has been prevented, however we do know that information from many sources is used by policing to monitor community tension and identify whether individuals are at higher risk.”

However, according to a Freedom of Information request seen by The Epoch Times, the CoP said that no empirical or non-empirical research had been conducted on the effectiveness of this policy since 2014.

Trivial Incident

Professor Andrew Tettenborn, common-law and continental jurisdictions scholar and advisor to the Free Speech Union told The Epoch Times that under the new guidance there is great deal of scope left to police in deciding what is “proportionate or trivial.”

“The point is that you have got this revised guidance from the College of Policing which says you shouldn’t regard trivial incidents which pleased everyone a great deal. But if you read the details, you will see that very little has changed,” he said.

“The protection against ’trivial' incidents isn’t worth the paper it is on,” he added.

Tettenborn explained that it could still mean that if a child in school teases another child because they have glasses or a hearing aid, or a remark at a private party mocking someone for being disabled, that could lead to them having a police record.

Home Secretary Suella Braverman has the power to take over from the College of Policing the power to dictate how NCHIs are recorded. (Oli Scarff/PA)

“Now the police say they aren’t trivial, if they aren’t trivial it’s a little bit difficult to see what is,” he added.

He said that one scenario could be when a police officer gets a call from a school because a child refers to someone else as four eyes as he wears glasses. “The policeman will want a quiet life without the school getting onto him saying what are you going to do about it. And he’s only human, he will record a non-crime hate incident,” said Tettenborn.

“If someone says there has been a serious outbreak of hatred in the community then the police will say ‘we took action.’ That is the net result of this,” he added.

Earlier this year, the government legislated to allow the Home Secretary to take over from the College of Policing the power to dictate how NCHIs are recorded.

“What we need to press for is for the Home Secretary to exercise their powers to write down what the criteria are for recording of incidents of this sort,” he added.