Non-crime hate incidents ‘are to be scrapped beneath new plans’

Controversial non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) are set to be scrapped under plans police chiefs will present to the Home Secretary, it has been reported.

Senior police figures believe that NCHIs are not ‘fit for purpose’ and the College of Policing and the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC) want the practice to be scrapped.

They insist that forces in England and Wales should no longer be policing ‘toxic culture wars debates’ by recording them.

The decision follows the Metropolitan Police who announced they would no longer investigate them.

NCHIs are incidents that do not meet the criminal threshold but are perceived to be motivated by hatred towards characteristics such as race or gender.

They have been increasingly used to record petty arguments and critics argue they stifle free of speech and waste police time.   

Under the plans, set to be presented to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood next month, NCHIs would be replaced with a new ‘common sense’ system, according to the Telegraph.

It would mean only a small percentage of such incidents will be recorded under the most serious category of anti-social behaviour.

Father Ted creator Graham Linehan was arrested by armed police officers following posts he made about transgender activists on X

The move comes after Father Ted creator Graham Linehan was arrested by five armed police officers in September over online comments about transgender activists.

The post, from his X feed, said: ‘If a trans-identified male is in a female-only space, he is committing a violent, abusive act. Make a scene, call the cops and if all else fails, punch him in the balls.’

He later wrote that during his police interview following the arrest, ‘I explained that the ‘punch’ tweet was a serious point made with a joke’, and that it was about ‘the height difference between men and women… and certainly not a call to violence’.

The Crown Prosecution Service eventually dropped the case against him, while Linehan said he intended to sue the Met over wrongful arrest and for breaching his human rights. 

Columnist Allison Pearson was also controversially investigated by the police after she mistakenly branding a pair of activists for a Pakistani political party ‘Jew Haters’.

Former police officer Harry Miller was visited by Humberside police after a complaint about an allegedly transphobic tweet. 

While grandmother Helen Jones was visited by two plain-clothes police officers after she posted online that she wanted to see a Labour councillor resign for being a member of an offensive WhatsApp group.

Lord Herbert, chairman of the College of Policing, said: ‘NCHIs will go as a concept. That system will be scrapped and replaced with a completely different system. 

‘There will be no recording of anything like it on crime databases. Instead, only the most serious category of what will be treated as anti-social behaviour will be recorded. It’s a sea change.’

He said the recording of non-crime hate incidents had ‘drawn police into an area I don’t believe they want to be in’.

Helen Jones was visited by two plain-clothes police officers after she posted online that she wanted to see a Labour councillor resign 

Ms Mahmood last month told police chiefs that officers should be policing the streets, not ‘perfectly legal language in any individual’s tweets’

Rather than logging hate incidents on a crime database, the plan would treat them as intelligence reports, with officers given a ‘common sense’ checklist.

The checklist is intended to ensure officers target only serious anti-social behaviour, such as antisemitism, the peer said.

He added that controversial arrests such as Mr Linehan’s would not happen under the proposed new system.

They will be excluded from crime databases which means any incidents won’t have to be declared as part of pre-employment checks.

Research suggests NCHIs take up to 60,000 hours of police time every year, with more than 13,000 NCHIs logged by police in the year to June last year.

Tom Harding, the College of Policing’s director of operational standards, previously said scrapping NCHIs would stop officers recording ‘trivial fallings-out online’ and allow them to focus on real policing.

The NPCC and College of Policing will publish their review next month, which will then be given to the Home Secretary, Shabana Mahmood. 

Ms Mahmood last month told police chiefs that officers should be policing the streets, not ‘perfectly legal language in any individual’s tweets’.