The recently-elected Labour Party government in Britain is reportedly considering plans to encourage police forces to once again record so-called “non-crime hate incidents” en masse.
In an apparent effort to create a “zero tolerance” approach to hate speech, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper is reported to be planning on reversing restrictions from her predecessors to bring back the mass recording by police of the Orwellian non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs), The Telegraph reported.
The recording of such incidents by police was restricted by former Tory Home Secretary Suella Braverman to instances in which they were “clearly motivated by intentional hostility” and risked “causing significant harm or a criminal offence”.
While, as the Newspeak-style name implies, they don’t actually rise to the level of an actual crime, non-crime hate incidents logged by police can have serious implications for those caught up in the dragnet, as a police record is created which can be accessed by some employers through background checks. Additionally, many are never even notified that their name has such a record attached by police.
According to The Telegraph, the new left-wing government is considering encouraging blanket recording of the incidents in a push against a supposed rise in “Islamophobia” and antisemitism in the UK.
A Home Office source told the broadsheet: “The Home Office has committed to reverse the decision of the previous government to downgrade the monitoring of anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate, at a time when rates of those incidents have increased.
“It is vital that the police can capture data relating to non-crime hate incidents when it is proportionate and necessary to do so in order to help prevent serious crimes which may later occur.
“We are carefully considering how best to protect individuals and communities from hate whilst also balancing the need to protect the fundamental right to free speech.”
However, the plans have drawn pushback, including from the Free Speech Union (FSU), which noted that despite hundreds of thousands of non-crime hate incidents being recorded by police, they have not provided evidence that the practice prevented any actual crimes.
FSU director Toby Young told TalkTv: “You wonder why the police are failing to solve burglaries, I think the stat from last year was that in almost half the regions of England and Wales, not a single burglary was solved, and the reason for that is because they’re too busy policing our tweets to police our streets.”
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