A Former Met Chief Commissioner Has Demanded a Review of NCHIs

Former Met chief calls for review of non-crime hate incidents

 

Report finds incidents take up 60,000 hours of officers’ time every year and distract them from fighting crime

A former Metropolitan Police commissioner has urged ministers to review the use of non-crime hate incidents in the wake of an investigation into a Telegraph journalist.

A new report, published on Monday by the Policy Exchange think tank, urges ministers to abolish the recording of the incidents by police after finding they take up 60,000 hours of officers’ time every year and distract them from fighting crime.

In response, Lord Hogan-Howe said the Government should study the report and consider whether police should be investigating the incidents at all.

His comments come after a row sparked by the investigation into Allison Pearson.

The award-winning Telegraph journalist was visited by Essex Police officers at her home on Remembrance Sunday, who told her she was being investigated for inciting racial hatred with a post on social media from a year before. The force later dropped the investigation.

While Pearson was being investigated for a crime, it prompted widespread scrutiny and criticism of non-crime hate incidents, which do not meet the criminal threshold but are recorded by police.

Lord Hogan-Howe is the most senior policing figure to criticise non-crime hate incidents.

He said the original aim to log incidents that could lead to racist attacks after the murder of Stephen Lawrence was “well-intentioned”, but the way the rules had been introduced had led to “little debate about their efficacy”.

The peer said police had no powers to investigate or interview “suspects” in non-crime hate incidents, which meant it had caused public concern when officers had done so.

“Whether something is a non-crime hate incidents is a subjective test based on guidance, producing inconsistent outcomes,” he said. “Parliament, rather than the College of Policing, has to decide whether the police should be investigating people for non-crime hate incidents and how they are recorded.

“I would urge ministers to look closely at this Policy Exchange report to inform the path they intend to take.”

In its report, Policy Exchange estimated that police officers were spending up to 60,000 hours a year investigating some 13,000 non-crime hate incidents, diverting them from fighting actual crime.

Its analysis suggested that Essex Police, the force that investigated Pearson, spent more time per officer on non-crime hate incidents than other, larger forces.

Last year, Essex Police recorded non-crime hate incidents at a rate of 21.5 per 100 officers a year – twice the national rate and three times that of the Metropolitan Police, four times that of Greater Manchester Police and 10 times that of West Yorkshire Police.

Policy Exchange said ministers should legislate to abolish recording of non-crime hate incidents by police. If they decided to retain them, police guidance should be rewritten to strengthen protections for freedom of speech, reduce officers’ distraction from fighting crime and ban logging non-crime hate incidents that did not contain personal data.

Under the current guidance, the personal data of alleged non-crime hate perpetrators can only be recorded if the incident is “clearly motivated by intentional hostility” and where there is a “real risk of escalation causing significant harm or a criminal offence”.

However, Policy Exchange said the definitions used by police for “hostility” were so low that they included “unfriendliness” and “dislike”. This, it said, “distorted the prevalence of genuine ‘hate’ incidents”. It recommended the definition threshold should be raised.

The think tank pointed to a report by HM Inspectorate of Constabulary in September, which found that many forces were still failing to correctly apply the guidance on non-crime hate incidents.

It uncovered evidence that confusion over the rules meant officers were taking a risk-averse approach summed up as “if in doubt, record”.  As a result, non-crime hate incidents were too often being logged for complaints that amounted to little more than people’s “hurt feelings”.

Andy Cooke, His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary, said officers were having to take action that “may appear to contradict common sense” and that there was a culture of “if in doubt, record a crime”.

Police have recorded a non-crime hate incident after a person refused to shake hands, which the victim “perceived to be hate-related due to gender identity”. They also logged a “rough” haircut reported by a customer who claimed his barber was “aggressive” following a discussion about the Ukraine war.

The Policy Exchange report, written by David Spencer, a former Met Police detective chief inspector said the Government should pass legislation to mandate police forces to follow the non-crime hate incident guidance.

Lord Hogan-Howe’s comments come after Lord Ken Macdonald KC, a former director of public prosecutions, also raised concerns about the recording of non-crime hate incidents.

The crossbench peer said people risked having their reputations tarred by the word of a supposed victim, telling BBC Radio Four’s PM: “We are talking about non-crimes.

“These are non-criminal incidents, and the bottom line is that a disclosable record is being made that a named individual has been responsible for a hate incident short of a crime without any proper process to determine whether the event took place or was motivated by hate, because the hate component is identified solely by the supposed victim on the basis of what they feel happened.”

Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, is considering plans to lower the threshold for recording non-crime hate incidents specifically for anti-Semitism and Islamophobia amid concerns that the current guidance is preventing police from logging incidents that could escalate into violence.

Last week, a No 10 spokesman said Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, was clear that the police should be spending their time protecting the public and keeping streets safe.

“When it comes to those incidents, we’ve also said that it’s vital we carefully consider how we balance the fundamental right to free speech and how police can gather information where relevant. We’re looking at how we can best ensure this is the case and will set out next steps in due course,” the spokesman said.

However, the Policy Exchange report said there was currently limited, if any, evidence to demonstrate that the large-scale recording of non-crime hate incidents had enabled police officers to prevent the “escalation” of situations into serious criminality.

Mr. Spencer said NCHIs are devastating the perception of policing, and that police chiefs have ignored serious crimes to pursue other matters.

He pointed out that by abolishing NCHIs, police could focus on crimes that really impact the public, crimes such as burglary and assault.

Read the rest here

This article (Former Met chief calls for review of non-crime hate incidents) was created and published by The Telegraph and is republished here under “Fair Use” with attribution to the author Charles Hymas and Connor Stringer

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