When children are being visited by the police for calling each other names in the playground, something has gone fundamentally wrong with the system. Officers are now turning up on the doorsteps of journalists for writing the “wrong thing”.
Private citizens are visited at home after posting comments on social media that some people do not like. Women are forcibly removed from venues because their presence offends transgender activists. Thousands of adults and children are now being investigated for so-called non-crime hate incidents. How did it come to this?
The answer, as is often the case, is both very simple and incredibly complicated. First, the easy part. A decade ago the College of Policing drew up guidance that introduced the concept of a non-crime hate incident.
It sets out how police should collect information on “hate incidents” that are not criminal offences but could escalate into more serious issues.
An incident is classed as one motivated by hostility or prejudice based on a protected characteristic such as race, religion, disability, sexuality or gender identity.
It means the police are being dragged into dealing with spats rather than crimes and in practice the accuser is assumed to be a victim. A quick visit to the worst parts of social media will soon lead to examples of people threatening to call the police because someone has posted an apparently offensive comment.
Wildly-successful author JK Rowling has become a target for such complaints over her refusal to bow down to trans-activists. But standing up for women’s rights should never become an issue to trouble the police.
It’s not the fault of the bobby on the beat being sent out to deal with such complaints. Officers have a tough enough job already, constantly having to deal with the darkest corners of society, witnessing gruesome sights that they can never unsee.
Most are baffled when they are dispatched to knock on the door of someone because of something they posted on X, formerly Twitter.
Journalist Allison Pearson, who was visited by police on Remembrance Sunday about a social media post from a year ago was told that she was not allowed to know who made the complaint against her or what it was about. She wrote in The Telegraph: “OK, you’re here to accuse me of causing offence but I’m not allowed to know what it is. Nor can I be told whom I’m being accused by? How am I supposed to defend myself, then? The two policemen exchanged glances. Clearly, the Kafkaesque situation made no sense to them, either.”
The problem is an institutional one and it has spread through the police, schools, councils, corporations and many more. A culture of fear has left employees and their bosses worried about being blamed if things go wrong later down the line.
It’s ludicrous that playground insults, such as telling another pupil they smelt like a fish, end up being reported, but teachers claim they are worried they will be held accountable for failing to act early if the name-calling escalates. Equally, police fear the repercussions if a social media row turns more serious. Everyone is worried that they will be the one hung out to dry. And this fear of blame has potentially serious implications.
Lord Macdonald, former director of public prosecutions, said it was “beyond belief” that children were being logged for non-crime hate incidents. He warned there were “real world consequences” because the record could be released to future employers.
“A lot of these incidents, particularly the ones involving school children, seem to be completely trivial and should not be being recorded against people’s names, particularly against children’s names,” he said.
The peer said there is no real investigation into whether the allegation stands up, they are simply recorded on the basis of the complaint.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper has suggested she might loosen the system so even more incidents can be recorded following tensions on the back of the war in Gaza. Meanwhile, the prosecution rate across the board for actual crimes is woeful.
Rape allegations take an average of 423 days to investigate and just 2.6% result in a man being charged. Residential burglary cases are closed after 18 days, with 73.3% shut down because no suspect has been identified. The charge rate is just 4.3%. Shoplifting has one of the higher rates of prosecution but that is still only 16.4%.
Instead of making it easier for grievances to be reported, Ms Cooper must reverse the tide.
Victims of crime must no longer play second fiddle to takers of offence. Or as Shadow Justice Secretary Robert Jenrick puts it: “Police the streets, not Tweets.”
