A leaked Home Office report has called on the UK government to revamp efforts to crack down on so-called “non-crime hate incidents” to counter extremism within the country.
In the wake of the Southport stabbing attack by second-generation Rwandan migrant Axel Rudakubana that left three young girls dead and several others injured and the anti-mass migration riots which followed, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper ordered a “rapid sprint” review to counter extremism.
The report, which was leaked to the Policy Exchange think tank, controversially branded public concerns over two-tier policing or Muslim child rape grooming gangs as an indication of “right-wing extremism”.
In one of its recommendations to the government, the Home Office report called for the revival of widespread policing of the Orwellian-named “non-crime hate incidents” (NCHIs), which, despite not rising to the level of an actual crime, can result in police files being opened against citizens for “offensive” comments.
The files can be visible on some employer background checks, meaning people could be financially impacted despite not being found guilty of any crime. In many cases, supposed offenders are not even made aware that a file has been opened against them, and there are currently no means of appealing.
In 2023, the previous Conservative government ordered police to stop recording NCHIs that do not meet the requirement for an actual offence.
However, according to Policy Exchange, the Home Office report called for this decision to be “reversed.” The report also called for creating a new criminal offence of making “harmful communications” on social media, which the previous government rejected over concerns of “criminalising speech on the basis that it had caused someone offence.”
While the government has distanced itself from the report, Home Secretary Cooper has previously argued in favour of expanding the recording of non-crime hate incidents as a means of combating the supposed rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism in the UK.
Since its introduction in 2014, police have recorded over 100,000 non-crime hate incidents in criminal databases, with over 13,000 recorded last year, despite orders from the government to reduce the practice.
According to The Telegraph, schoolchildren, doctors, and even vicars were swept up in the recording last year by police.
The Free Speech Union (FSU) has criticised the “Orwellian” police tactic as an assault on free speech as well as a waste of police resources, previously noting that there is no evidence that the practice prevented any actual crimes.
A petition with over 22,000 signatures has called on the government to scrap the category entirely, arguing that what is considered hateful is “entirely subjective and, therefore, constitutes an existential threat to the freedom of speech/expression of the general public.”
The petition went on to warn that non-crime hate incident reports put a “person’s future employment prospects at risk for what we believe may ultimately be harmless jokes or a disagreement of opinion.”
In response to the petition, the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the College of Policing said that they will review the process and present their findings to the government.
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